Former Vice-chair of Banff Centre Raises Questions about Diversity

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The former vice-chair of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity says she was forced out last summer while leading efforts to improve the board's diversity.

Donna Kennedy-Glans, a former Progressive Conservative MLA for Calgary, says the Alberta government removed her while she was working to identify diversity candidates for vacant board positions as head of the board's governance and recruitment committee. She was appointed to the 16-member board in 2019 by the same United Progressive Conservative government.

In an essay published this month in Alberta Views, Kennedy-Glans writes that she had circulated what she calls a routine governance questionnaire to fellow board members, but CEO Janice Price and board chair Adam Waterous, a businessman, decided "to upend" her efforts.

The pandemic has seen mass layoffs at the Banff Centre, as well the departures of three senior staff – Rosemary Thompson, vice-president of marketing and development; Howard Jang, vice-president of arts and leadership; and Bruce Byford, the chief financial officer. 

"Increasingly I was hearing unsolicited concerns – directly from people working at the Banff Centre, from prior employees and from friends of the place – about the waves of departures from the Indigenous leadership programs, the ongoing frustration of artists who felt abandoned by the centre during COVID-19, and the implications of an authoritarian, top-down leadership style that was out of sync with the inherent values of the place," writes Kennedy-Glans.

In August, CBC News reported the Banff Centre had said Kennedy-Glans was removed at the request of the centre's senior leadership, citing her "continuing and varied failures to adhere to Banff Centre's code of ethics."

Kennedy-Glans calls those claims "unfounded" and writes that she has since heard from people concerned about "the push toward commercialization and the neglect of core arts programming" at the Banff Centre.

Artists, curators and others in the arts community circulated an open letter to the Banff Centre in July 2020, expressing concerns about the future of visual arts residencies and the Walter Phillips Gallery.

The centre partially reopened its campus over the summer, building on the digital programming it offered earlier in the pandemic.

Source: Alberta Views, CBC News