Thanks for the pic!! Glad you stopped by 😊

the way I literally screamed when I saw it & demanded we pull over so I could look at it closer 😅

This is really sweet. Thank you for sharing.

Sure, 95% of what we do as SB wouldn't count as being "business savvy" but

for a long time, I never expected to be happy, ever, again

and every day, I wake up I am grateful for that.

I would say that it isn’t even isolated to artists. It’s frustrating to be treated as an outsider here. As long as you are from somewhere else, someone in Lethbridge will make you feel that you don’t belong.

This is also very true & we sadly we have data to represent that as well;

We've run p0lls asking "Do You Find Lethbridge Cliquey" with numbers 65% Yes

Notable for us within in the "No" votes: representatives of many institutions (😅)

The disconnect is jarring.

And I've always believed:
understanding is the greatest gift of all.

We can't say we have all the answers, or even some of them.
But being able to vocalize problems is the first step to solving them..

They say 2026 is the Year Of The Horse,
but maybe
it's the Year Of The Canary.

We, too, have been outcasted from organizations that "should" have accepted us; we've been blacklisted by others for speaking out against injustices in our community.

However, standing alone has never bothered us.

In fact, it has helped us understand so much more.

We've seen it too: artists silo'd off, disconnected.

This is part of what drove us deeper into creating artist opportunities & enabling spaces that are community-centered. It is our attempt to build a Lethbridge that reflects a bit closer to our idealized view of What Could Be.

We also weren't ready for how devastating their words would be.

When we ran a follow-up p0ll on stories, asking: "Have you felt isolated as a creative in the city?"

For the first time in our p0lling history, 100% of the respondents said YES.

(Usually our p0lls have, at the most, a 96%)

That secret sat in our drafts for months.
It wasn't new knowledge for us;
quite the contrary:
we have heard it for years now,
from artists of all levels.

What we weren't expecting, though, was how many people would reach out in response because they didn't feel comfortable talking publicly.