We have a strange relationship with the arts, often pretending they are unimportant or irrelevant when in fact we are consumed by them. The stories and inspiration they provide are often what gives our lives meaning and hope.
As a community, we tend to invest more heavily in sports, building hockey rinks, artificial soccer turfs, gyms where we can play basketball and pools where we can swim. Squamish has all these things, but we have invested little in the arts, preferring to hope others will make the investments for us.
We do have a small public art gallery, but it’s the entrance to our library, not a separate space we have paid to build. The other main art gallery in town, the Brackendale Art Gallery, is privately owned, even though it also organizes some of the biggest entertainment events in town.
Our lack of public investment in local art is odd, considering how important arts are to our lives. When we hike the trails, we almost always try to capture the beauty around us through photography. When we drive, we relax to music or listen to storytellers with velvety voices, and throughout the day, we click on links to writers’ stories about the people who surround us.
When we are finished work, we immerse ourselves in movies, television shows, video games or books, or we go out and listen to musicians fill the air with rhythms as we enjoy time with friends. Even as we practice sports, we are often listening to music.
It’s all part of our normal day, but we may not think of it as arts. Without the stories and images that help us shape and understand our world and provide ideas to inspire us, our lives would be dull. Even our relationships are often driven forward by mutual enjoyment of movies, books or music.
Strange, then, in a place as stunningly beautiful as Squamish, we have no public arts centre, no dedicated arts facility where citizens can enjoy art and create it, except an inadequately small building in a park downtown. This could finally change next week due to the efforts of a group of volunteers who are working to secure a 7,000-square-foot space in a housing development. If approved by the strata and staffed by a grant from the district, Squamish artists will finally have a space to call home, to exchange ideas, learn techniques and create the inspiration for our lives.
– Editor Christine Endicott
