In March of 2022, Council directed Administration to undertake a public art selection and procurement process to integrate public art into the Airdrie Multi-Use and Library Facility. City Council approved the allocation of $520,000 out of the construction budget for the acquisition of art for the facility. This is meant to cover consulting fees, artists honorariums, reserve fund contributions for ongoing operations and maintenance, and the purchase of the public art and supporting infrastructure.

In December 2023, the City's consultant, STEPS Public Art, held a call for artist submissions, as well as a call for volunteers to be on the Public Art Selection Committee.

In early 2024, the Public Art Selection Committee narrowed down 96 submissions to just four finalist artists and artist teams. Each proposal includes two art concepts, one for the main atrium inside the building, and one for the green space outside the facility, next to the Nose Creek pathway.

This survey is now closed. Your feedback has been provided to the Public Art Selection Committee for consideration as they deliberate the proposals and ultimately select the public art for the new facility. The finalist will be announced by Council later this summer.

Two dynamic public artworks entitled: Change of State/State of Change, are inspired by ideas of transformation and change found both locally and universally. Both interior and exterior works bring community imaginations about the future of this new facility together with forms inspired by Airdrie’s sometimes dramatic temperature swings and their sudden alteration of the city’s landscape.

Jill Anholt is an award-winning artist based in Vancouver, Canada whose practice includes commissioned environmental and sculptural installations, and collaborative design team projects for public spaces across North America. Jill has a diverse education that includes Sculpture, Human Sciences and Architecture. Exploring hidden stories, systems, and qualities of a particular place, Jill searches for a unique spark of magic in every project she undertakes which she weaves into dynamic spatial artworks that create connections between people, and between people and place, through surprising moments of discovery, revelation and/or transformation. Jill’s process, rooted in the rigours of her diverse education, embraces a wide variety of scales and materials, often incorporating dynamic illumination at night and/or utilizing elements that alter with viewer perspective or interaction, or that transform through engagement with natural phenomena such as sunlight, wind, or changing weather conditions.

The atrium “Community Portrait” is a cloud of miniature colourful people suspended from the ceiling through a simple armature. The figures are made by scanning Airdrie residents and 3D printing them using a biocomposite produced from agricultural byproducts. This kinetic artwork vibrantly represents the community at the new building’s entrance.

The plaza “Community Portrait” is composed of a ring of split boulders creating a colourful meeting place. The artwork represents the diversity of the community and aims to create new connections. The rocks will be engraved with phrases from local residents describing what the community of Airdrie means to them.

Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster are Toronto-based artists and educators who have collaborated since 2003. Together they create spaces and objects that interrupt everyday situations in critically engaging and playful ways. As a multi-disciplinary practice, they operate at a variety of scales, from temporary installations to permanent public artworks. Their practice focuses on ‘social infrastructures’ which seek to build community by fostering playful interactions in physical space. Their academic research focuses on the role of play in the built environment and alternative methods of documentation as a form of historic preservation. In 2021 their oral history and photography project “Growing up Modern'' was published by Birkhäuser as a book with English and German editions.

Their work is in the public art collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly Albright-Knox), Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts (CEPA Gallery), Edmonton Arts Council and the Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge. They have exhibited in galleries, produced temporary installations and realized permanent public artworks in Canada, USA, Germany, France, Italy and South Korea, including solo shows at Vtape in Toronto, the Weissenhofwerkstatt in Stuttgart and Gallery Kolektiv 318 in Marseille.

Landscapes of the Imagination is a swirling cloud of stories floating up into the atrium of Airdrie’s Multi-Use and Library Facility. Inside each bubble is a fantastical landscape, artfully crafted to reflect the favourite stories of library users – an intricate chandelier, drawings from the books that feed our collective imagination.

Sky Garden is a shimmering archway connecting Nose Creek pathway to Airdrie’s new Multi-Use and Library Facility. Hundreds of aluminum mirrors glisten in a curve rising overhead, referencing a garden trellis, cloud-form, or Chinook arch. These “sky flowers” reflect the colour of Airdrie’s dramatic prairie skies and magnificent sunsets.

Caitlind r.c. Brown is an artist, collaborator, and cultural organizer. She graduated from Alberta University of the Arts in 2010, earning an Alumni of Merit Career Award in 2019. She has founded numerous projects, collectives, and collaborative partnerships, including WRECK CITY, an organization curating experimental art exhibitions in pre-demolition spaces. She guided The Wandering Island with Lane Shordee & Wayne Garrett, facilitating ‘slow art for the audience of birds, bats, beaver, fish, and the occasional curious wanderer’ unfolding on an island in the Elbow River. In response to the rigours of working in the field of public art, Caitlind & Wayne launched The Hibernation Project in 2019, an annual experimental art series combating the isolation of Winter through a series of collaborative events. Spinoffs from The Hibernation Project include monthly sound art radio program, EARS HAVE EYES, and IDLE WORSHIP, a mobile car-based exhibition touring the parking lots of Calgary.

Wayne Patrick Garrett is an artist and musician. He trained as a Journeyman Machinist at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, working in Whitehorse, Yukon for several years before returning to Alberta to pursue an education in Jazz Music at Mount Royal University. He entered into the world of contemporary art through the Arbour Lake Sghool, a subversive arts collective in the suburbs of Calgary, when he moved into the collective's house in 2007. Here he met Caitlind Brown and they began their joint career in the arts, collaborating on films and installations. Wayne performs as a musician in a series of bands, including Ghostkeeper, Amy Nelson, Ryan Bourne & The Plant City Band, and many more. He will be releasing his first solo pedal steel album with Inner Ocean Records in 2024. Wayne’s love of collaboration, rigorous experimentation, composition, and technical proficiency began with music and machining, and expanded into a multidisciplinary arts practice.

From Earth to Sky is a public art installation symbolizing the connection between Mother Earth and Father Sky through a sculptural tipi. The seven poles, each adorned with Blackfoot pictographs, represent the seven generations practice and the seven local tribes. This landmark honors Indigenous heritage, promotes community values and celebrates unity.

High Pasture Mobile; Past, Present and Future is a suspended-art concept featuring pictographs in three circular patterns representing Airdrie’s past, present, and future. Created through community collaboration, including unique pictographs by local Blackfoot artist Adrian Stimson, it reflects diverse voices and stories, symbolizing Airdrie's unity and heritage.

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in southern Alberta. Adrian has a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. He is an interdisciplinary artist and exhibits nationally and internationally. His performance art looks at identity construction, specifically the hybridization of the Indian, the cowboy, the shaman and Two Spirit being. Buffalo Boy, The Shaman Exterminator are two reoccurring personas. His paintings are varied yet his use of black and white monochromatic paintings that depict bison in imagined landscapes are melancholic, memorializing, whimsical, they evoke ideas cultural fragility, resilience and nostalgia. His installation work primarily examines the residential school experience; He has used the material culture from Old Sun Residential School on his Nation to create works that speak to genocide, loss and resilience. He was a participant in the Canadian Forces Artist Program, which sent him to Afghanistan. Adrian was awarded the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018. REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award –Hnatyshyn Foundation 2017. He was awarded the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.

Pierre Poussin is a Queer French Mauritian-Canadian artist who specializes in large-scale sculpture and public art. His artistic goal is to bring joy, wonder and discovery into public spaces. He believes that art has the power to empower, to enrich and excite the soul, as well as being inclusive, accessible and meaningful for a community. Pierre thinks art should be tailor-made for the space it inhabits, and just as importantly, for the people and community that the artwork serves. His work explores the contrasts that exist in our surroundings, blending elements of nature, industry, history, and technology. He focuses on creating permanent public art installations and sculptures that animate their surroundings and the communities they serve.

For the past 15 years, Pierre has had the opportunity of creating dozens of permanent public artworks across Canada including multiple free-standing sculptures and integrated public art installations for architectural and landscaping firms, urban developers, as well as municipal and federal public art programs for cities across the country, including: Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Collingwood and Vancouver. His upcoming projects include a series of public artworks for the City of Ottawa's Westboro and Sherbourne LRT stations. Forage will be a collection of over-sized freestanding fossilized mushrooms crafted with weathered-steel and Local Lichen will be a series of low-relief sculptures created in part by recreating a lichen growth algorithm to help generate natural growth patterns and reassembling them using traditional rug-making techniques.

Another upcoming public art project is entitled Saga, and created for the Town of Collingwood, Ontario. It will comprise of two 9.1m (30’) tall lighthouses with etched drawings inspired directly by the first and last ships built in the area, helping to commemorate the importance of Collingwood’s historic shipbuilding industry. Pierre’s most recent work includes: Brick Obelisk, for The City of Toronto, Cascades, for The City of Ottawa, Esprit, for The City of Edmonton, and Ursa, for One Water Street Towers (Kelowna, BC) by The North American Development Group and Kerkhoff Construction. Over the years, he has had the pleasure of working with a diverse range of clients including: The 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics Games, Sheridan College, Princeton University, McMaster University, Nienkämper Furniture, Concord Adex Developments' Lakeshore Panorama, Quartz & Lumen Condominium Towers (Toronto, ON), Diamante Developments' Yorkville Florian Tower (Toronto, ON), Pinnacle International Developments' Crystal Tower for Uptown (Mississauga, ON), Toronto’s Royal Canadian Yacht Club, the Walt Disney Corporation. Pierre studied biochemistry at the University of Ottawa and Furniture Design at Sheridan College.

The new library and multi-use facility is under construction on the site of Airdrie’s old fire hall located on Main Street SE. Opening is currently set for winter 2025.

The new 73,000 sq ft facility will be a place for the community to connect and participate in programs and activities. It will offer lifelong learning and arts development, shared multi-purpose rooms and office spaces, and an atrium for residents and visitors to enjoy.

The most popular activities and services based on a list of suggested activities and services outlined in a 2021 household survey to residents.

Through interviews and a survey in 2021, targeted stakeholders expressed interest in space that offers: