On September 24th we were joined by Scott Higgins, President of HIP Developments to speak to us on the topic of Creative Capital of Canada.
Creative Capital of Canada was founded two years ago as a grassroots organization to raise the awareness of Waterloo Region’s creativity and ability to reinvent itself. The roots of this organization are in the realization that the regional identity was fractured (ie. Make it Kitchener, Quantum Valley) or tended to be borrowed or an extension of other communities (ie. Silicon Valley North, Canada’s Technology Triangle). Additionally, our growth plan has tended to be focused on attracting university students and encouraging them to make their home in the community. This transient talent pool will only take us so far as our existing plan does not properly encourage those from within the community to stay in Waterloo for education (unfortunately local kids sometimes cannot get into our Universities as the entrance requirements are quite high), recognize the community’s strengths and become a long term part of its force of innovation.
Creativity is more than just being artsy. Arguably, Montreal would fit the artsy bill better than Waterloo Region. If you expand the definition of creativity to include invention, innovation, creation as well as art and culture, then you can see why Waterloo Region is the Creative Capital of Canada. We have a long history locally of innovation that goes back into our roots including:
- First watershed management systems
- First adopter of blue box recycling
- First restorative justice program in Canada
- Patent of the 2 piece hockey stick
- Bauer skates
- Seagram’s whiskey
- The Blackberry cell phone
The list of Waterloo Region industry firsts, inventions and innovations is very long and while some of the credit can go to the mandates of our Universities (which are different from others in Ontario) much of this creative energy was home grown. Our community has always been about “What’s next?”, when markets have changed, it hasn’t mattered to our Region as we are resilient.
Many communities are competing for talent now so to be only reliant on transient talent is unwise and unsustainable. Similar movements can be seen in other communities such as the city of Austin Texas who focused their efforts on recognizing a strength of culture by naming themselves the live music capital. This cultural movement resulted in a music festival and now the city is recognized as being a pretty cool place to live.
This is the time to pass the creative baton to the next generation by involving the local community in this movement. No one person owns this initiative/strategy, as it is all our responsibility to cultivate this initiative. To involve youth, a fund will be introduced shortly thru JA targeting youth ideas for creativity and innovation.
For stories of local creativity and innovation visit the website or the Facebook page.
Together we can learn about the creative legacy of our region and build on this foundation for the future.