The Expanded Gallery - The “Connect Studio”*

Mall as Connection Broker? as a Springboard?? as an Equalizer???

RECOVER is excited to explore an Indigenous informed artist studio/crafter space in Edmonton City Centre that facilitates connection to culture, sacred and/or the human project, as shared in the Wellbeing Framework. With the emerging downtown environment and through the City's Community Safety and Wellbeing Strategy, there's been great emphasis on downtown safety. We acknowledge the great efforts of EPS working to remove threat; however, we would like to focus on testing a space that could cultivate a sense of safety, connection and hopefully, experiences of wellbeing. This prototype could span from September to December 2022. The specifics of this prototype are yet to be confirmed, though we hope it will help to bridge across differences (connecting downtown workers with Indigenous people experiencing marginalization) using art and culture.

This prototype has its roots in the round of ethnographic research that was done in and around Edmonton City Centre. This is the playback book that shares the insights and opportunity areas that were identified from that research. It got going in the fall and ran into issues around timing with the pre-Christmas season. Artists that we hoped to engage were already committed to be in other spaces. We extended the experiment into the new year, but ran into other challenges that prevented the prototype from being fully realized. There is mutual interest in trying to test this idea at some point in the future.

Our partners in this prototype were Edmonton City Centre, J5 Design, the Edmonton Public Library, and the Edmonton Arts Council.