Sharing diverse stories of creativity in our city, The Storytelling Podcast shines a spotlight on artists and projects that connect Calgarians to the arts.

Part of The Storytelling Project, this series raises awareness about Calgarians who, by living creative lives, are making Calgary a better city, effecting positive change and enriching others’ lives.

Have a story to share? Email us at news@calgaryartsdevelopment.com.

The Storytelling Podcast

Community builder, administrator, facilitator, writer, spoken word artist, and Program Lead for Trico Changemakers Studio at MRU, Sally Njoroge is heavily involved in Calgary’s arts community and looking at promoting artists as change makers.

Working with artists and organizations throughout Calgary, she seeks to bring people together in a shared space to address some of the more complex challenges in our society today.

Listen to this week’s podcast to hear more about her further efforts building community through the upcoming virtual workshop and gathering, Why Art for Social Change?

Sally Njoroge | The Storytelling Podcast

Founder and director of Woezo Africa Music & Dance Theatre, choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, producer, and member of the Cultural Instigators Program in the Black Led Spiral, Wunmi Idowu is working towards equipping Black artists with the tools needed in order to succeed in Calgary’s arts sector. 

The Black Arts Development Program was created to offer opportunities for Black artists to learn from Black instructors, to train and hone their skills in order to thrive in their craft.

Listen to this week’s podcast to hear more about the Cultural Instigators Black Led Spiral and the Black Arts Development Program, as well as upcoming workshops and events arising out of this initiative.

Wunmi Idowu | The Storytelling Podcast

Paula Timm is a visual artist, writer, mixed media arts instructor, and a community collaborator. A life changing decision to live her life as a creative person while coping daily with illness led to her co-creating and co-facilitating an arts-based workshop series with creative partner, Michelle Dyer. 

The Creative Wellness Program combines art therapy with the physical practice of art, allowing people to connect to the material and to express themselves fully in the moment.

Paula Timm | The Storytelling Podcast

Cowboy Smithx is a filmmaker, a theatre artist, a community organizer, and curator, and Jennifer Armand brings her background as a photographer and graphic artist to their collaboration—showcasing local artists with #T7NFT, a project that explores the new art space of crypto art and NFTs. 

Smithx and Armand see this new space as an opportunity to demystify crypto art for Calgary artists. By offering a new way to monetize their work and to share their work wider, they hope to expose as many artists as they can to a new realm and new possibilities.

Cowboy Smithx & Jennifer Armand | The Storytelling Podcast

She's an award-winning filmmaker and director, a theatre maker, a mentor, the creator of a re-imagined Herland, as well, Sandi Somers is a past recipient of the Doug and Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award, part of the Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards at Calgary Arts Development. Having started her career in visual arts and theatre, then moving into film, Somers saw how film could incorporate different aspects of the arts.

Somers feels that a lot of her stories deal with connection and how we connect, a theme that runs throughout her work and continues to inspire her.

Sandi Somers | The Storytelling Podcast

Originally from Brazil, Calgary Arts Development’s Community Liaison Sayonara Cunha had worked in the preservation of Brazilian cultural heritage prior to her moving to Calgary in December, 2019. She relishes the opportunity to explore and support the arts community, and channels her own creativity to navigate her transition into her new life during a pandemic.

Listen to this week’s podcast to hear more of Cunha’s story, what her role as Calgary Arts Development’s Community Liaison entails, what community means to her and how discovering a new creative endeavour has inspired her while settling in Calgary.

Sayonara Cunha | The Storytelling Podcast

A film director and writer, Kevin Littlelight is a member of the Tsuut’ina Nation with proud Tsuut’ina and Blackfoot heritage, was instrumental in the creation of the Tsuut’ina Office of the Arts and now holds a seat on Calgary Arts Development’s Board of Directors. With the support of his family, Littlelight took time away from home and left a prestigious career behind to head to film school in New York and kick-start his creative path as a filmmaker.

Littlelight acknowledges the need of an artist to express their creativity. "As an artist you really have a deep drive in yourself to express your art or to get everything out of you and that doesn’t happen really in an office environment, it doesn’t happen in an administration environment. Artists, if they can’t do art, then they implode.”

Listen to this week’s podcast to hear more about Littlelight’s creative journey and experiences, and the sacrifices he made in order to realize his dream.

Kevin Littlelight | The Storytelling Podcast: Indigenous Stories

Allan Rosales is a visual artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, poetry, photography, digital art and murals. He also holds a master's degree in Art Therapy from Concordia University. Having worked extensively throughout Calgary as a community connector, Rosales has recently joined the Calgary Arts Development team as Community Investment Manager, approaching the role from the perspective of the artist.

Listen to this week’s podcast to hear more about Allan Rosales, his artistic training, his work with the Cultural Instigators, and his new role at Calgary Arts Development.

Allan Rosales  | The Storytelling Podcast

Calgary-based artist, musician, composer, songwriter, teacher, mother and long-standing member of the Calgary arts community, Kenna Burima would thoughtfully describe herself as a creator and connector. With the release of her latest endeavour, a song cycle entitled While She Sleeps, Burima reflects on her creative process, motherhood and her need for connection.

Tune in to this week’s Storytelling Podcast to learn more about Kenna Burima’s music, her writing and how she continues working to overcome the challenges that come along with the rewards of being both a mother and a creator.

Kenna Burima | The Storytelling Podcast

In our inaugural episode, host Brandy Dahrouge, Calgary Arts Development's Director of Public Art, introduces us to public art historian and curator Katherine Ylitalo, whose lengthy career in public art provides some interesting details about some of the artworks in the City's municipal art collection that may not have been shared before.

An advocate for visual arts, Ylitalo is also a curator, writer, educator and garden historian who has been drawn to the arts since very early in her life, when she would draw, paint and read as a young child. She initially studied architecture, but it was a difficult path for a woman at that time and she shifted to pursing art — and it proved to be a good fit. "...The first curating job I got in Regina was working at the Dunlop museum, and it was a show on teapots that were shaped in different ways, and I was hooked. And once I started working with art and the public I just thought, this is where I want to be."

Katherine Ylitalo  | The Storytelling Podcast: Public Possibilities

An office manager by day, Lana Manyfingers is a proud Blackfoot Cree woman who explores her artistic side in her free time — and, in a unique collaboration, is currently displaying it for the hundreds of visitors walking through a local big-box store.

Manyfingers has experience in sewing, crafting, beadwork, jewelry making, sketching and painting, while also being very much influenced of the teachings of the medicine wheel and nature and the land. She says her connections to her community led to her most recent and fascinating project designing an Indigenous-inspired room at, of all places, IKEA.

Tune in to this week’s Storytelling Podcast to hear more about how Lana Manyfingers came to work with IKEA, her creative influences, and her love of sharing her culture and creativity.

Lana Manyfingers | The Storytelling Podcast

Lisa Congo is a writer, singer and self-proclaimed theatre buff who uses art not only as a form of self-expression, but also to promote healing through her work at Sonshine Community Services.

Sonshine Community Services provides support and services for women, children and individuals who have experienced trauma through domestic abuse. Congo, who was born and grew up in Calgary, explains how the arts specifically contributes to wellness and creative expression, and how they play a role in Sonshine's programming. "There’s a long history of how art and creative expression can be used to heal the human spirit. I love that brain science allows us to kind of see things that those of us who would identify as artists have known all along, that art does heal and does help us to process through things. We can now actually see with the technology and brain science how, that it actually is making a difference," Congo says.

"... Creative expression and artistic expression really helps the brain to fully make the pathways and connections that need to happen, which are necessary for people to be able to feel like they’ve been able to process through what they’ve experienced, they can move on further into their healing journey."

Tune into this week's Storytelling Podcast to hear more about Lisa Congo, her work with Sonshine Community Services and the science behind the healing power of art.

Lisa Congo | The Storytelling Podcast

Having earned degrees in both art history and art conservation, as well as working across Canada for numerous institutions and museums, Sophia Zweifel is now focusing on public art and the realm of public art as the current conservator for the City of Calgary Public Art Collection.

Tune into this week’s Storytelling Podcast to hear more from Sophia Zweifel on her role as conservator for the City of Calgary Public Art Collection, as well as her thoughts on how a piece of public art’s impact and meaning can change over time.

Sophia Zweifel | | The Storytelling Podcast

We continue our exploration of our public art program in this episode with Heather Campbell, a facilitator of public art projects, graduate of AUArts with a degree in fine arts, an artist in her own right and more recently, public art manager for Calgary Arts Development.

Tune into this week's Storytelling Podcast to hear more from Heather Campbell about what's in store for the public art team in 2024.

Heather Campbell | Public Art | The Storytelling Podcast

Sometimes following your creative path opens up new and unexpected opportunities. Such is the case for Priscille Bukasa — a spoken word artist and writer who started her career in marketing and social media management. Now working as a teaching artist and an arts facilitator, Bukasa is also a member of the Cultural Instigators and was a recent facilitator at Calgary Arts Development’s 2023 Living a Creative Life Congress focusing on Art for Social Change. However, it all began with her discovery of poetry in junior high school.

Pricille Bukasa | The Storytelling Podcast

Priscille Bukasa | The Storytelling Podcast

A long-time champion of the arts in the city, visual artist Kathryn Pearce is the executive director of Maude Collective and a project manager with the City of Calgary Main Streets Project. Her interest in making meaningful spaces that people want to be in is apparent in her work with public art, placemaking and community building.

Kathryn Pearce

Col Cseke is many things to the Calgary arts community. A community organizer, playwright, director, storyteller and the artistic and executive director of Inside Out Theatre, a Deaf/disabled and mad theatre company.

Since moving here years ago as a recent grad from the University of Lethbridge, Cseke has found his artistic home, his lifelong people, and his purpose — bringing people together and bringing awareness and activism into the arts sector.

Photo: Col Cseke

Col Cseke

Calgary-based artist and community builder Stacey Perlin encourages positive and constructive conversations around mental health.

Tune in to this week’s Storytelling Podcast to learn more about Stacey Perlin and how she took lessons from her own challenges and the search for answers to create the Perlin Foundation for Wellbeing.

Photo: Stacey Perlin

Stacey Perlin | The Storytelling Podcast

When Słavek Pytraczyk had the opportunity to create public artworks for banners on bridges and lightposts leading into the downtown core, he invited Calgarians to participate by identifying their favourite works of architecture.

Słavek is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on photography and mixed media. As a Polish immigrant who moved to Canada back in the late 1980s, Słavek fell in love with the hustle and bustle of the big city.

Photo: Brendon Many Bears & Slavek Pytraczyk

Słavek Pytraczyk

When Harvey Nichol found himself having to make some hard choices after moving to Calgary/Mohkinsstsis from Manila as a teenager, he couldn't have known that the struggles he was currently facing would indirectly guide him into a career as an artist.

Photo: David Jaesun

Harvey Nichol

As an artist, covering medical costs or seeing yourself through a life-altering event can sometimes mean the difference between getting by and falling through the cracks financially. Elephant Artist Relief Society was founded in 2007 to assist artists who find themselves in these situations, and when Marianne Elder joined its team as a manager, being a community builder and artist herself, she saw an opportunity to help build up the arts community here in Calgary.

Tune into this week's Storytelling Podcast to hear more about Marianne Elder's work with Elephant Artist Relief Society, the impact it's had on the community and the origin of the organization's name.

Marianne Elder

When you’re in the Beltline, you can’t miss the giant murals found on the sides of some buildings. These are the product of BUMP — the Beltline Urban Murals Project — that began in 2017 with a vision to infuse life, transform spaces and activate the neighbourhood. This inner-city festival quickly evolved into an international mural festival, with BUMP also programming arts and culture-focused events.

BUMP Festival: Priya Ramesh and Ryan Tram

Kelly Armstrong, a digital specialist with Tourism Calgary, has been working on a new program to help Calgarians and tourists alike discover art in our city and learn more about the art and the artist who created it. Described as a digital app-like experience, the Calgary Public Art Trail pass is a new mobile-optimized site where users can check out public art pieces throughout the city using geolocation. Armstrong hopes this will be a fun way to learn about public art as well as different neighbourhoods in the city.

Kelly Armstrong | The Storytelling Podcast

Kelly Armstrong

Miesha Louie fell in love with punk/garage music when she was a self-described angsty teen living in Invermere, B.C. She sought out like-minded kids in school who shared her interest, forming bands and booking community hall shows. She eventually brought her talent and ambition to Calgary, where she honed her craft and is now mentoring others.

Miesha Louie

Miesha Louie The Storytelling Podcast

There are artists who can produce a work of art, be it a painting, a sculpture, a film, theatre, and then there are those whose creativity leads them unknowingly into the arts. Art can take many forms, and for Tyson Bankert, his creativity is expressed through his ability to build community, convene people and encourage others to embrace their own creativity and whimsy through his project, Recess Calgary.

Tyson Bankert

Tyson Bankert | The Storytelling Podcast

Rumble House has been a safe haven for artists for years — somewhere to both create and witness art in its making, to experience a sense of community and family, while ultimately providing space to test boundaries and creativity. For artists Jess and Rich Théroux, it has always been important to provide an alternative to the more commercialized art scene in Calgary. The seeds of Rumble House were planted in Rich as a teenager by a seemingly unlikely source: Music on film.

Rumble House will be closing its doors at the end of this year, with the couple transitioning to their new project, Isle of Roux.

Tune into this week's Storytelling Podcast to hear more about the origins of Rumble House, how it helped make art more accessible in Calgary, how deep its community ties are and what's next for Rich and Jess Théroux.

Rich and Jess Théroux: Rumble House

Calgary's Chinatown pops with a bit more colour these days with the addition of three mural panels that have recently been installed as part of Calgary Arts Development's Public Art program and an initiative to enliven the Chinatown community. The artist responsible for these panels, titled The Bison and the Dragon: Untold Stories, is Jarett Sitter, who started the project two years ago. Although his practice is primarily in illustration, he found himself applying to a call to create a road mural in Chinatown in February of 2022.

Jarett Sitter

Tune into this week's Storytelling Podcast to learn more about Jenn Seniuk and how the My Friend Dave project acknowledges and humanizes those who often get overlooked on the streets, bringing dignity and validity to their stories and recognizing their creativity.

Jenn Seniuk: My Friend Dave Project

With works that explore the Chinese diaspora in Canada ranging from the recreation of Chinese-Canadian restaurants, opium dens, artist and photo studios to name a few, artist Karen Tam draws from her upbringing to create these installations that reflect "cultural encounters," both experienced and observed. Tam will be at AUArts on November 19, 2024 for an artist talk on their current exhibition, Sea of Clouds.

Sea of Clouds runs until November 23, 2024 at Illingworth Kerr Gallery, AUArts. Artist Talk with Karen Tam takes place on November 19, 2024.


Karen Tam: Sea of Clouds

For artist, writer and creative consultant Geraldine Ysselstein, a life centred around the arts wasn't entirely unexpected, given that she had grown up in a family that favoured and encouraged the arts and artistic practice.

Tune into this week's Storytelling Podcast to hear more about Geraldine Ysselstein's view on art for social change as well as what else she's looking forward to at this year's upcoming Living a Creative Life Congress.

Geraldine Ysselstein

Having grown up in a dance studio — her mother being an owner and director of a studio in their house — Ashley Brodeur followed a natural trajectory herself into the world of dance. Training with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks brought her to Calgary, and from there she developed and refined her interests to movement and storytelling, as well as creating inclusivity and celebrating individuality in dance. Working at the National Access Arts Centre helped her do just that.

Ashley Brodeur Podcast

An important economic driver and part of a vibrant arts community, music can play a key role in creating a vibrant and resilient economy. 

With a love for community and city building through the arts, Kaley Beisiegel is the lead consultant for West Anthem, the engagement consultant for Calgary Arts Development, and a professional musician and singer/songwriter in Calgary.

Tune in to learn more about what she is up to, where Alberta’s music scene is going, and why Calgary is poised to become a topnotch music city.

Kaley Beisiegel | The Storytelling Podcast

This year’s recipient of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society New Canadian Artist Award, Aya Mhana is a Syrian-born singer, songwriter, and oud player. Now a proud Canadian citizen, Mhana moves easily between English and Arabic, writing lyrics with a poet’s sensibilities.

Get to know her inspiration and more about her journey—tune into The Storytelling Podcast to hear her story.

Aya Mhana | The Storytelling Podcast

Making extraordinary change in Calgary, community developer Cesar Cala believes in the power of ordinary people making extraordinary change.

Cala has worked and volunteered for organizations like Oxfam-Canada, the Developmental Disabilities Resource Centre of Calgary, Citizen Artists YYC, Calgary Arts Development, and ActionDignity, and has been involved in local initiatives like Calgary Vital Signs, grassroots grant-making, cross-cultural dialogue, and community organizing.

Tune into this week’s Storytelling Podcast to hear more about his work in anti-racism, community building, and the opportunities artists and creatives play in this moment in history.

Cesar Cala | The Storytelling Podcast

As the city’s designated arts development authority, Calgary Arts Development supports and strengthens the arts to benefit all Calgarians. 

These podcasts are part of our Storytelling Project, a series to raise awareness about Calgarians who, by living creative lives, are making Calgary a better city, effecting positive change and enriching others’ lives through arts and creativity.

Calgary Arts Development

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