Of all the buildings at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation is the most prominent. It sits pretty much in the center of the campus and rises 3 stories above the hillside. The first time I saw it and read the name, I saw the disconnect. My first impression was "prison," and wondered what went on in there. But it also dismayed me that with this building, the Banff centre had become so large. Did the Banff centre "build it so they will come"? And have they used all of that space for creativity and innovation?
It turns out that they haven't. All of the 2020 layoffs prompted an open letter from some staff to implore the leadership to get back to its roots. Apparently, in order to make use of the building, leadership seminars fill the large part of the schedule and square footage. That's why this building is so interesting. I think it represents the notion that an institution must grow in order to remain viable. But when institutions grow, they require more resources and consume more.
I took the first photos with the Polaroid using paper negatives, then returned with the large format camera, then later with the Olympus OM-2. It's hard to capture the impact of this building in pictures. I wanted to give a sense of how imposing it was, so thought a strip of negatives would help.