artsPlace - 51° 05' 23" N 115° 21' 46"

When you live in Canmore, it is easy to focus on physical activity.  Cycling, downhill and cross-country skiing, climbing, hiking, running, canoeing ... the daylight seems to vanish from underneath us.  Winter brings colder temperatures and shorter bouts of sunshine, so we do find ourselves indoors and looking to fend off cabin fever.

As well as being a town full of active people, love of (and occupancy in) the mountains also inspires artistic endeavours.  There are many artists in our little berg and therefore the arts community is unusually strong.  We have no less than three theatre companies; there are more public and private galleries than you can shake a hiking pole at; the Bow Valley hosts the Banff Centre for Arts; there are world-class festivals for music, spoken word, painting, sculpture and written word.  Heck, we even have a former potter as a mayor.  One of the outcomes of this is we have a fabulous community gathering centre called artsPlace.

Artspace hosts a pottery studio (of course), gallery space, several classrooms and a large performance space that seats roughly 200 people.  We were attracted to an event there last year and have been going back almost weekly to different events.  Things we have seen there and things we are looking forward to include:

• After the Fire - a live-actor play about the survivor guilt and aftermath of the fires in Fort McMurray in 2017
• Pecha Kucha - a theme-based, storytelling night that shows 20 slides for 20 seconds per slide.
• several movie nights of arthouse films, including Blinded By The Light and Where Did You Go, Bernadette?
• screening and Q and A session of the documentary, We Will Stand Up.  We had elders from the Stoney band attend and give their (very interesting) opinions on the film afterwards.
• Nakoda Language and Culture course, given over 10 evenings, where we will learn language (and therefore a bit about their perspective on the world) from a Nakoda elder.

We are very lucky to have such a great resource within walking distance of our home.