Public Art, Participation, and the Shifting Urban Landscape

Jasmine Palardy

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Speaker

Jasmine Palardy

Jasmine is a community-builder and placemaker who has worked with urban innovators around the world to create more innovative, imaginative places where ideas thrive. She’s worked in startups, coached startups in Silicon Valley, has launched crazy festivals with plenty of pyrotechnics, and designed innovation districts and community hubs. Her goal: enhancing serendipity between people in ways that make places better for humanity.

Jonny Hehr

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Speaker

Jonny Hehr

Jonny is an Architect and Partner at GGA-Architecture. He has had the pleasure of working in the Calgary downtown area on projects of various scale for the past 13 years. He approaches his work with an arts background stemming from his undergraduate degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Jonny is a passionate supporter of local arts and making the best of our opportunities in the design of our public realm.

Alana Bartol

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Speaker

Alana Bartol

Alana Bartol (she/they) is an artist and educator working at the intersection of art and ecology. They create site-responsive artworks that examine our relationships with the Earth and colonially defined natural resources. Long-listed for Canada’s Sobey Art Award in 2019 and 2021, their practice includes drawing, experimental video, performance, sculpture, participatory art, public art, installation, and curatorial work, presented in exhibitions and festivals across Canada and internationally. Alana is a white settler with Danish, German, English, Irish, and Scottish roots. In 2015, they moved to Mohkinstsis, Treaty 7 territory, (Calgary, Alberta), and began teaching at Alberta University of the Arts.

Druh Farrell

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Speaker

Druh Farrell

Even before she was elected to city council in 2001, Druh Farrell recognized the power of public art, partnering with the Alberta University of the Arts to commission projects in her community of Hillhurst Sunnyside. During her twenty years as a councillor she helped found Calgary’s art policy, the Calgary Arts Development Authority, the Public Art Policy, and championed the many public art projects in East Village. Druh has witnessed first hand how art can provoke debate and transform our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Shauna Thompson

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Moderator

Shauna Thompson

Shauna Thompson is currently Curator at Esker Foundation, Calgary. She has supported solo projects and exhibitions with many local, national, and international artists, including Deanna Bowen, Mel O’Callaghan, Ragnar Kjartansson, Fin Simonetti, and Katie Ohe, among many others. She was co-curator of the major touring group exhibition, Earthlings (2017-18), which featured the solo and collaborative works of Roger Aksadjuak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, Jessie Kenalogak, John Kurok, and Leo Napayok. 

Thompson is a current and founding member of Calgary’s Public Art Alliance, a coalition of artists, curators, critics, arts professionals, and students who advocate for the value of public art in Calgary. 

Prior to joining Esker Foundation, Thompson was the Curatorial Assistant at the Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre. She has also worked with the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (now the Art Museum at the University of Toronto) and YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto, as well as the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Thompson holds master’s degrees in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto and in English from the University of Guelph.