Welcome to the winter 2007 issue of Inspired: The Banff Centre Report
to the Community.

By Mary E. Hofstetter President & CEO

With the New Year comes new beginnings — and a new name for this publication. Inspired reflects both the impact and the legacy of Banff Centre programs.

Certainly “inspired” is an apt description of the program participants and staff in the Centre’s Theatre department as 2007 begins. Costume designers, scenic painters, stage carpenters, and lighting technicians are hard at work, putting the final touches on the sets and costumes for Frobisher, set to premiere on January 27, 2007.

The Banff Centre is proud to partner with Calgary Opera in co-commissioning and co-producing this important new Canadian opera. Over the past two and a half years, ten intensive workshops have been held here in Banff, allowing the Frobisher creative team to work collectively to refine the story, music, and production elements of this new work.

Frobisher is an example of the creative collaboration that fuels the work of The Banff Centre. Throughout the Frobisher development process, emerging theatre professionals worked with Canada’s top theatre artists, exchanging ideas and acquiring hands-on skills in a learning environment unlike any other in Canada.

The multidisciplinary collaboration that made Frobisher possible exemplifies one of The Banff Centre’s greatest strengths – the capacity to bring together participants from diverse disciplines, backgrounds, and viewpoints. This unique mix enables the Centre to act as a creative catalyst for projects as diverse as Santee Smith’s A Story Before Time, the Tokai String Quartet’s re-imagining of Patrick Cardy’s The Snow Queen, and the new media works supported by our Interactive Screen program.

As we highlight in this issue, multidisciplinary collaboration also informs the professional development and research opportunities that the Centre provides — helping scientists to communicate, inspiring new forms of leadership, and informing the methodology behind groundbreaking audio research. The Centre’s multidisciplinary mix also allows us to provide a neutral ground for participants from diverse viewpoints, as was superbly illustrated this fall when scientists, government officials, and policy makers from around the world gathered at the Centre for the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy.

This winter, the Alberta Government expressed its confidence in the importance of the creative collaboration, research, and professional development supported at the Centre with a $27 million investment in The Banff Centre Revitalization project, bringing the total provincial contribution to $50 million. This investment recognizes the Centre’s status as a unique institution — one that inspires creativity, drives economic growth, and enhances the quality of life which defines the Alberta Advantage.