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.
When we went into lockdown mode in March 2020, we realized we would not be able to maintain any kind of social distancing practices in our small venue. We found some financial support from SK Arts Special Projects Fund, purchased some new equipment to augment what we already had, and converted the gallery from a performance and exhibition space to a production studio. We’re now creating digital content on a regular basis. You can find all of this content here on our website and on our YouTube channel!
We are also offering different artist development programs, such as our Social Media Marketing for Artists (SMMART) program, which teaches artists the skills they need to market themselves in the digital age! Learn more about this program here! We are also in the process of completing the second round of our Recording Artist Development (RAD) Program. The RAD program allows music artists to set up shop in our Hague Gallery for a month and learn all the ins and outs of the music industry. Learn more about the RAD program here!
We are proud to support Saskatchewan talent in every medium! Have some questions about our programming, send us an email at social@creativecitycentre.ca
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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