Welcome to the winter 2008 edition of Inspired – and to The Banff Centre’s 75th anniversary year!

Throughout 2008, The Banff Centre will celebrate its heritage through signature events and programs.

As you will read in this issue of Inspired, these events will include the premiere of Red Sky Performance’s Faster, Higher, Stronger: The Mongolian Project — a ground-breaking dance work created at the Centre, and the only Canadian performance to be included in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics Cultural Festival.

Creative works supported by the Centre will illuminate stages across Canada in 2008, including The Gryphon Trio’s Constantinople, Alon Nashman’s The Snow Queen, Toronto Dance Theatre’s Timecode Break, David Lavallée’s film White Water, Black Gold, a new work by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, and many others.

Here in Banff, we’ll mark our 75th year with new programming initiatives including a professional theatre program partnership with Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, innovative puppetry and choral workshops, the commissioning of a new Canadian play, the launch of a music program focused on composition, the revisioning of our dance programs, and a global creativity summit. The 75th anniversary Banff Summer Arts Festival will be bigger and better than ever, with two opera performances, a Music Masters Series, the return of a summer drama performance, and the launch of a 75th retrospective exhibition and book.

This year we will also celebrate the remarkable success of phase one of the Campaign for the Banff Centre, which has raised $123 million to date for The Banff Centre. Thanks to James Kinnear and the Friends of Pengrowth’s $10-million-dollar donation, we’ll break ground on the new Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation this spring.

The Centre’s founders recognized the value of creativity when they established Banff’s first program in 1933. That summer a budding actor could attend a ten-day theatre training program for just one dollar. Times have changed — but the Centre’s commitment to inspiring creativity remains, and with your support it will continue to grow.

Please join us throughout 2008 as we celebrate both the legacy and the future of The Banff Centre.

Mary E. Hofstetter
President and CEO