Our Belief

That equitable access to the arts is a human right.

Our Responsibility

To redefine a bold and adventurous Calgary by championing and investing in creativity.

Our Mission

To be an inspirational force where artists, community, and organizations celebrate cultural identities, experience the full breadth of human emotions, and ignite positive change.

Our Mandate

To provide and care for artists and arts organizations
To ensure equitable access and utilization of our venues
To foster, promote, and celebrate a vibrant arts community

Our Values

Do the right thing

behaving with integrity, applying professionalism, being honest, and erring on the side of grace.

Be our best always

in service, in leadership, in professionalism, and in providing a quality experience.

Be open: minds, hearts, arms

through empathy, openness, trust, and collaboration, seizing opportunities to impact our community in a positive way.

Our Strategic Priorities

The organization's strategic priorities include supporting the artists and arts organizations that call Werklund Centre home, including the more than 200 community groups that utilize our venues, to realize their missions, and to foster opportunities for collaboration across our cultural campus.

Our Road Map to Reconciliation

At Werklund Centre, our commitment to reconciliation is embedded in our work through core guiding principles.

These principles are shaped and guided by our work with an Elder Advisory Circle, including Elders Reg and Rose Crowshoe, and translated into actionable strategies led by the ReconciliACTION Committee. Through this work, we strive to learn the truths about our shared history with Indigenous peoples, understand and acknowledge the impact of colonialism on Indigenous autonomy and culture, support Indigenous peoples in their healing, and incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing into our organizational practices. In our efforts to parallel our work to honour both Settler and Indigenous ways, we approach all our work with these principles in mind:

Ethical Space means creating an environment where two knowledge systems can exist in parallel with compassion and mutual respect, and where knowledge is co-created without one system imposing on another.

Sanctified Kindness is a practice that helps to establish a brave space for open conversation, equality, compassion, and gentleness to all living things, creating the opportunity for learning and understanding. It can provide the foundations for truth and reconciliation, and the first steps towards eliminating systemic racism.

Making Relatives is a concept with the notion that all things in creation, including the air, land, water, flora, and fauna, are related, and is understood and practiced through the cultural principles of Discipline, Responsibility, Respect, and Accountability.

Our Impact

Explore our most recent Reports to Community and discover how we live our mission of bringing the arts to all of Calgary, and vice versa

Mission, Mandate, & Values