Have you read a great book lately?
Or experienced a song, a film, or a performance that left you wanting more of the deep stirring you felt in your soul?
This is what we do here at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
We are a post-secondary institution dedicated to inspiring everyone who visits our campus – artists, leaders, and thinkers – to unleash their creative potential.
Banff Centre’s Literary Arts Program supports writers to develop the novels and poems, the plays, the stories, and articles that fill our shelves and our minds. From Waubgeshig Rice to Suzette Mayr, from André Alexis to Irving Layton, from Dionne Brand to Alice Munro – Canadians craft the nation’s literature at Banff Centre.
To support Banff Centre means to support artists from coast to coast to coast and from around the world.
Will you consider making a gift today, in celebration of this 50th anniversary? Your donation will help widen our reach to artists who may not have had the opportunity to attend Banff Centre.
As a former schoolteacher and university professor, a poet and writer, I personally understand the challenges that Canada’s writers face. I am dedicated to our nation’s literature and literary community and I hope that you will join me in this vision.
I see Banff Centre as an incubator for cultural and artistic change. It is a hothouse that produces growth, development, and community. The conversations that happen here – around a dinner table as writers and musicians, dancers, and visual artists share meaningful moments – ripple out from the mountains and across the entire nation.
This is where Canadian art is born.
Almost 100 authors will benefit from our Literary Arts program this year. The books and articles they write at Banff Centre will go on to inspire us, move us, educate and connect us.
Authors like Katarina Thorsen—a Vancouver artist and writer who attended Banff Centre’s Graphic Novels and Visual Narratives Residency last spring.
Katarina shared with us her daily journal from the two-week residency she attended at Banff Centre. Here are some excerpts, to offer you a glimpse into how donor support—from people like you—can truly change the course of an artist’s life and career.
April 25: Had a lovely one-on-one with Bishakh [Som, faculty member] this afternoon. Still can’t believe I was sitting across from one of my heroes talking about our work. Learned a lot of what working with a publisher means.
April 29: Working on my manuscript. Huge new insights into how to organize content! So many great conversations. So much delicious work to do.
April 30: Interesting panicky feeling today. It may be that I need to eat. But also, my brain is swirling with everything that has ever happened / is happening / might happen in my life. Is it fear? Or is this what freedom tastes like?
“Freedom is not about the size of your cage, or power of your wings, or non-attachment to a person or a thing. Freedom is about being so deeply, madly, and truly attached to your own soul that you can’t bear, if only for a moment, a life that doesn’t honour it.” – Andrea Balt.
May 5: This residency is NOT a dream come true because I have never dreamed that anything could be this good. This cohort … Everyone’s work is so different and absolutely extraordinary. To be surrounded by these creative folk is beyond empowering.
In Katarina’s message of thanks to Banff Centre and to Banff Centre donors, she wrote:
Your generous support has allowed me the time, space, support, and sustenance to participate in the residency and to step fully into my identity as a graphic novelist ...
I am ecstatic to share that, thanks to the residency and visit from Andy Brown of Conundrum Press [guest publisher], Andy has expressed that he wants to publish my book in its entirety when I have completed the project. I continue to be deep in creative process and hope to complete the book in June 2024.
I do not exaggerate that this has been one of the most powerful and transformative aspects of my life … no words suffice to express my gratitude.”
There are no other organizations that offer what Banff Centre does: a campus dedicated solely to artists who seek the finest mentorship-based opportunities in the world.
The best way we can encourage Canadian art to flourish is to help remove financial barriers for artists!
A small gift can help cover the cost of a day’s meals during a residency at Banff Centre. A larger gift can support a scholarship to cover program tuition. A major gift can bring an innovative new program theme and residency to life.
Donations at any level tell artists that you value their work and their learning – and that you want to be part of that process.
Banff Centre is a beehive! The buzz of creativity, mentorship, collaboration, and artistic exploration makes a hum in the air. I invite you to give today in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Literary Arts.
Please join us to keep the hum of creativity going strong!
Dr. Derek Beaulieu
Director of Literary Arts
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
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