City of Iqaluit gives moral support to performing arts centre concept

The Iqaluit-based Qaggiavuut society hope to build the territory’s first permanent centre to showcase Inuit performing arts, like these 2011 Alianait festival performers. First, the group plans to conduct a feasibility study to gauge public support. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Nunavut’s Qaggiavuut society has backing from Iqaluit city council, as it moves ahead with a feasibility study for a performing arts centre in Iqaluit.

The society got a letter of support from the city March 14.

Qaggiavuut’s executive director, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, said city councillors gave unanimous support to studying the idea, which the city feels would be a worthwhile addition to Iqaluit’s infrastructure.

“This is something they’ve wanted to see for a long time,” Williamson Bathory said. “It means as a community that we’re moving forward on this.”

Qaggiavuut translates into “come into the qaggiq,” a large igloo that can serve for community gatherings, celebrations and performances.

The society, made up of performing artists from across Nunavut, hopes to revive the qaggiq spirit in 2017.

To get there, Qaggiavuut has approached organizations and government agencies for help in conducting a feasibility study to gauge public interest for a performing arts centre, which would likely be built in Iqaluit.

For now, the City of Iqaluit’s support is in-kind, and the city, which will share any previous studies done on infrastructure planning, has also offered to help the group eventually identify a lot.

Qaggiavuut plans to launch the year-long feasibility study this May with money they hope to secure from the Canada Council for the Arts and different Government of Nunavut departments.

The group estimates the study could cost anywhere between $300,000 and $500,000 to complete.

Ellen Hamilton, co-chair of Qaggiavuut’s board of directors, said the study would be “comprehensive and Nunavut-specific.”

“We’ll be looking at everything from design to what the communities actually want in a centre,” she said. “It has to be really relevant to Nunavut and to Inuit culture.

“This isn’t going to be a palace for the wealthy, it’s going be a living space that reflects the people who live here.”

Because of the great distances between communities in Nunavut, the study will have to address how a performing arts centre can bridge those gaps, Hamilton said.

That could mean video-conferencing from the centre, or bringing in groups of artists to do month-long, in-house performances, she said.

And the centre could even be used as a marketplace, or a venue where artisans can work on projects.

“The world has changed a lot on how we interpret what a performing arts centre is,” Hamilton said. “We hope to reflect whatever the current thinking is.”

“This will be the very first of its kind in Nunavut, but we’ll also be the last Canadian province or territory to get one,” she added.

If the feasibility study indicates wide-spread support for the idea, Qaggiavuut would launch an international fundraising campaign in the spring of 2013, with the goal of starting construction on the centre in 2017.