The Creative City Centre was incorporated in 2008 by our founder, Marian Donnelly. She had leased an empty space in Regina’s downtown and had a vision to convert it into a community-based arts centre. It took months to get the financing in place and the original design plans approved. In 2009, mechanical, electrical and plumbing was installed. In 2010, Marian and a small team of volunteers spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours removing old wallpaper, refinishing floors, installing sinks and toilets, tearing down walls and building new ones. By early 2011, tenants started to move in. On May 8, 2011, the Creative City Centre was officially opened with a media event and performance.
Since then, we have presented between 150-200 events every year, including music concerts, visual art exhibitions, spoken word and poetry slams, comedy nights, life drawing sessions, film screenings and just about any kind of workshop or community event you could imagine.
The funding support we received over the years was always appreciated, but never quite enough. We’ve managed to get by with part-time programming staff, but always relied on the volunteer time, passion and energy of our founder. Marian has been the bookkeeper, grant writer, HR manager, janitor, bartender, sound technician and tenant manager among many other roles.
In 2019, Marian submitted a grant application to the Canada Council for the Arts, proposing to develop a new training program for artists, teaching them how to use social media. The week before the pandemic lockdown started in March 2020, we found out that grant application had been approved. As we were closing our normal operations for the lockdown, we started putting in place what is now our SMMART program (Social Media Marketing for Artists).
We also got busy writing more funding applications and were able to secure support to convert our Hague Gallery from a performance and exhibition space to a production studio. As we continue to navigate through COVID-19 restrictions, we are focused on producing digital content. We hope you enjoy our podcasts, artist spotlights and video series, and that you’ll like, post and share on social media channels.
We are proud to support Saskatchewan talent in every medium!
The Creative City Centre exists because of the financial support of Jacqui Shumiatcher, Dr. Roberta McKay and Elmer Brenner. These generous supporters of the arts in Regina are pillars in our community and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts!
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