UPLIFT: The Banff School of Fine Arts and the Public University

The University of Alberta created the Banff School in 1933 to extend adult education as a means of equity and sustainability. Over its first four decades, the Banff School produced and circulated ideals of culture and liberal democratic citizenship that were intrinsic to the development of modern Canada.

How did public education and the Banff School of Fine Arts uplift the people? From the depths of the Great Depression to postwar prosperity, Alberta’s public university were enablers and innovators for a hopeful future. An engine of nation building and tourism development, public education and public parks stimulated culture and capital.

As the U of A’s PearlAnn Reichwein shows us, a pandemic and climate crisis bring us full circle. We must reimagine and reinvent the arts and education as a way of seeing ourselves and our world anew.