Groups introduce 10-year plan to increase city arts and cultural infrastructure options

People meet at Edmonton's ArtsHub Ortona on May 8, 2026, for a meeting introducing the city's Cultural Infrastructure Plan, a 10-year strategy to shape current and future spaces for arts and cultural use. (Nahreman Issa/CTV News Edmonton)

Three city groups have released a plan they hope will help cultivate more local cultural spaces and resources.

Arts Habitat Edmonton, the Edmonton Arts Council and the Edmonton Heritage Council on Friday introduced the city’s Cultural Infrastructure Plan, a 10-year strategy to increase not only the number of spaces Edmontonians can access for arts and cultural pursuits but also the variety of locales for them.

Al Chapman, the executive director of Arts Habitat Edmonton, said Friday the types of spaces they’re looking to use could be current ones or new builds, indoors or outdoors, and in all parts of the city.

“What we’re hearing is (the spaces are) not in the communities that people are living in, so they have to travel to a lot of these spaces to participate,” Chapman told CTV News Edmonton.

“They’ve asked us for ‘in community,’ so how do we find spaces in their own community? Some of them are empty storefronts. In other cases, they might be old schools. We’re talking to recreation centres, we’re talking to libraries, we’re talking to the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues about what kind of spaces there are and how we can, together, utilize them more.”

The groups say the plan’s 42 priorities are broken down by short-, medium- and long-term timelines to get it implemented. They hope to work with private developers and communities to raise the money needed to create and transform spaces.

“I want everybody to see themselves in this plan and say, ‘Yes, we can do this in our community,” Chapman said. “In 10 years time, I want to be able to walk around the city in every neighbourhood and see activations.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nahreman Issa