Victoria has welcomed a new cultural sensibility into the
fabric of our city.
We’ve been moving along our “Late Night, Great Night” strategy to keep our entertainment and cultural scene vibrant yet safe. The city is using downtown as an open air cultural venue with new events on the waterfront, at Centennial Square and Royal Athletic Park that are attracting locals and visitors alike. We’ve also been keeping our arts and cultural organizations whole – keeping our funding intact while other levels of government cut back their support. It’s essential to maintaining a liable and appealing city as well as attracting and keeping a young, working age population we’ll need to not just maintain our role as “everyone’s downtown” but also to ensure a growing and dynamic economy has the people and resources they need to keep our key industries thriving.
We’ve also been working with the Royal BC Museum, a centrepiece of our downtown cultural assets, to help support and shape their plans for and expanded space to show more of their collections and more of our history. Proving that opportunity will help improve Victoria’s visitor experience and anchor our tourism and cultural precinct at the north end of our downtown.
There’s always more we can do.
Much of our downtown waterfront remains a sad and desolate viewscape for empty cars. We need to work with our community to envision new and more engaging uses that should include better performance facilities for our many festivals. We have to make it more pedestrian friendly so residents and visitors are attracted to use an evolving harbour pathway system to explore the heart of the city on foot.
Public art is also an important element of our cultural identity. We’ve yet to realize its potential and new pieces need to find their way to our waterfront and around downtown. With our new bridge project about to begin, I’ve also made sure that pieces of the old bridge are kept to be incorporated into a new public art feature to remember our heritage and add to the public realm at this important gateway to our harbour and out city.
Longer term projects will require community conversations and a commitment of capital investments. A new performing arts centre, a downtown art gallery, and a new central library are fresh initiatives that can help support our tourism and cultural industries, both drivers of our economic prosperity and key job creators in their own right.