What can the NWT’s new arts centre learn from elsewhere?

“There’s a lot there that we’d really like to have here.”

Members of the team planning a new arts centre for the Northwest Territories are back from a factfinding trip to the Yukon, and Sara Komarnisky is impressed.

Komarnisky and Mary Buckland, from the NWT Art Centre Initiative, took in the awarding of the Yukon Prize for Visual Arts across a weekend of festivities in Whitehorse earlier this month.

Those festivities were centred around the Yukon Arts Centre, a theatre and gallery space that opened in the Yukon capital in 1992. Komarnisky and Buckland are among a group trying to produce something similar for Yellowknife that would serve the NWT.

So far, the NWT Art Centre Initiative has determined its location of choice: the site of the former Akaitcho Hall, which operated from 1958 to 1994 as a residence for children from across the North who attended the neighbouring Sir John Franklin High School. The building has since been demolished.

Komarnisky said the project team is now hoping the NWT government will agree to the use of that location as a new arts centre.

“The ball is in their court to evaluate that and get back to us,” said Komarnisky. “Once we know where we’re building, we can move forward and think more deeply and concretely about design and what the space is going to actually look like. We don’t want to do that before we know where we’re building.”

But that doesn’t stop the team deriving inspiration for what an NWT arts centre could ultimately do.

One observation Buckland made during a tour of the Yukon Arts Centre was how the size of its gallery space allowed artists to operate at a scale seen less frequently in the NWT.

“Their spaces are much bigger to make art, to show art, to store art, which we don’t really have here and is definitely something we’re working towards – big-enough wall space to make bigger pieces,” Buckland said.

Size isn’t about just vertical wall space. One example? The winner of this year’s Yukon Arts Prize, Aubyn O’Grady, whose Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers – a performance art piece based on an actual wrestling league O’Grady helped found – required the installation of a wrestling ring at the Yukon Arts Centre.

Komarnisky noted Yellowknife already has a performing arts space in the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre. That means the needs of the city and territory may not be met by simply copying the Yukon Arts Centre, which offers a NACC-esque performance area.

“I look at them and I see a lot that we’d need here, but we want to make it NWT style, you know what I mean?” she said. “It’s definitely going to reflect our context.”

Yukon isn’t the only area being looked to for inspiration. The NWT team says it is also studying projects like the planned Nunavut Inuit Heritage Centre and the role art has played in helping to transform Newfoundland’s Fogo Island.

Buckland has also “turned us on to the Faroe Islands,” Komarnisky said, referring to the group of 18 Danish-owned islands between Iceland and Norway, which have a population only slightly larger than that of the NWT.

The Faroese capital is comparable in size to Yellowknife, Buckland added, and the NWT team can talk to Faroe Islands counterparts about how they deliver programming “that is reflective of the entire country” – or territory.

“We’re talking about very, very similar scales of population, of economies. We can learn from them,” Buckland said.

Nuuk, Greenland is also on the list to be consulted.

“It’s a chance to open the door, get to know each other a little bit, learn about their experiences and hopefully build our network,” said Komarnisky, “so when our arts centre is open, we can collaborate in cool ways across the circumpolar North.”

The timeline for the NWT government to reach an agreement regarding the Akaitcho Hall site isn’t clear. Nor is the eventual expected price tag on a new centre.

Nunavut’s new centre recently received a $50-million federal contribution, though that covers only a third of the projected $150-million overall cost and proponents are still trying to find most of the remaining cash.

Asked when she hopes an NWT arts centre might open, Komarnisky said the “idealistic and optimistic timeline” is 2030 at the earliest.

“It could take longer. Any of these timelines can get stretched out, but that’s what we’re working with now,” she said.

“So just think about that, in five years – walking through the doors of a beautiful new arts centre.”