In May of 2019, a team led by the University of Saskatchewan Kenderdine Art Gallery received a Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategy Fund grant to develop a digital service with Saskatchewan arts organizations to allow them to engage with and give voice to their audiences and other art creators. However, the exact deliverable was intentionally vague; rather than presupposing what this diverse group (from internationally recognized art galleries to community puppet theatres) needs, the grant was built around first engaging with both these organizations and their current and potential audiences in order to gain an understanding of their varied needs. Only once this assessment was done would the actual development begin. In this paper we will introduce the project, and the funding program that supported it, and describe the process of community consultation for both the development of the grant application and the needs assessment. We will introduce the findings from the first phase of the Shared Spaces project and the resulting first prototypes for arts engagement, which use augmented reality, that have gone back out to the communities for further consultation and refinement.

1. arts
2. community engagement
3. gallery

Original publication information:

Originally published in Pop! Issue No. 2

Date: October 31, 2020 

DOI: 10.48404/pop.2020.08

License: CC BY-SA 2.5 CA

Original citation:

Bath, Jon, and Michael Peterson. 2020. “Building with the Community: Developing digital tools for engaging with the arts in Saskatchewan.” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory. 2: n.p. DOI:10.48404/pop.2020.08