The Artistic Director of the Western Canada Theatre is optimistic that the positive momentum for the arts in Kamloops hasn’t been lost despite the Kamloops Centre for the Arts project being shelved for the time being.
Speaking on NL Newsday, James MacDonald says he wants to focus less on the building itself and more on the support that the sector has been getting as a result of the project.
“This was never just about making a building, this was actually about providing a home for the local arts organizations in Kamloops. Certainly for Western Canada Theatre we are bursting at the seems when it comes to our offices, when it comes to our needs for rehearsal space, for educational classroom space and for performance space.”
“The momentum that we have built and the information that we have, not only delivered to the people of Kamloops but received back form the people of Kamloops, is something that is not going to go away. So whether it’s about promoting the arts in general in Kamloops and promoting local arts especially or whether it’s about finding the needs for a facility, those conversations are not going to go away and we’ll pick them up when the time is right.”
MacDonald says the KCA campaign has helped the arts community learn about itself and how the needs of different groups align.
“When we got into the KCA discussion we realized in conversation with all the different grassroots arts organizations in the city, there’s so many. I mean there’s music companies, there’s dance companies, there’s theatre companies, there’s all sorts of independent artists in the city that literally have no spaces. No space to rehearse and no space to perform.”
MacDonald says the idea of an arts centre is to promote community gathering and provide a space to do that.
“It will be about community gathering. Sometimes that is for entertainment purposes and sometimes it is for graduation ceremony and sometimes it is to see a great artist coming through town. But really the basis of it is our community wants opportunity to gather in fellowship. And that’s the great thing about the arts and its a great thing about this city is we’re so lucky to be here. Especially as we look around the world right now we see the value of a city this size with the support that we are offering each other and that’s really fundamental to the arts centre project is that it had room for all sorts of different events to be happening within those walls.”
“When the time is right and we pick that up again that’s something that is at the top of our messaging to people and our discussions with people is what sort of things do you want to see in a building like this. And whether it comes back as the same project or some adaptation of it, it will still be community based and at the heart of it is serving the needs of our community right now beyond the arts.”
