Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Parliamentary Secretary Taleeb Noormohamed announced millions in funding for a pair of Calgary cultural institutions.

The Glenbow Museum is set to receive $2.5 million, and the Telus Spark Science Centre $500,000 through the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund.

The funding will be used to create 34 new exhibition and gallery spaces at the Glenbow, as well as redesign the collection spaces for the museum to make them visible to the public for the first time in five decades.

Funding for Spark will be used to purchase audio-visual equipment for renovated galleries at the centre, allowing for more interactive experiences that are more inclusive for all visitors regardless of physical ability.

Noormohamed said that now, more than ever, investments into Canadian culture are needed.

“Investments in the arts and in culture and in music, are ones that allow us to establish, to strengthen our Canadian identities, our identity as a country, to allow us to learn about each other, and, most importantly, to make sure that there is a very, very strong Canadian point of view,” Noormohamed said.

“This world needs Canada, and it needs us as Canadians to feel proud of who we are. You’ve seen in the conversations about this nonsense about the ’51st state,’ how Canadians of all walks of life have said, ‘absolutely not.’ We are so proud to be Canadian, and investments like this allow us to reinforce the importance of appreciating who we are and who we can be.”

Fighting for these investments into the future of Canada’s cultural identity was something that all levels of government and non-profits had to be engaged in, said Noormohamed.

“We depend on it, and the future of this country depends on it,” said Noormohamed.

Speaking on the political side of the investment announcement given recent shakeups in Ottawa, Noormohamed said that despite parliament being prorogued, the funding for the two projects has already been set aside and that Canadian Heritage would be providing that funding shortly.

Making the decision to fund the projects was both easy and hard given the competing priorities for cultural funding in Canada, said Noormohamed,

“It’s a rigorous application process, adjudicated and at the end of the day, they’re all difficult choices, but they’re actually also easy choices. These two institutions have been cornerstones here in Calgary, bringing together people from literally, from all over the country and all over the world when they come but more importantly, what they deliver to the community here is critical,” said Noormohamed.

“I would say that they were the right choices, and then really pleased that we were able to make those announcements today.”

Opening up collections in a way few have ever seen them

The CEO of the Glenbow Museum, Nicholas Bell, said that he was thrilled and grateful to receive the support of Canadian Heritage through the Canadian Cultural Spaces fund to support the museum.

“This is money that’s going directly to two phases of our campaign. One of those we’re working on right now, which is rebuilding visible art storage for the largest public visual arts collection of Western Canada, so that’s more than 30,000 works of art, primarily Canadian art,” he said.

Those pieces of art have been unseen by the public in Calgary for 50 years.

“The other part of that goes towards what’s dozens of exhibitions based on art collections, which will help show Glenbow’s global collection of almost a quarter million artworks and artifacts,” Bell said.

He said that one thing that will be obvious to the public when the museum reopens in 2026, is that the incredible wealth of art and cultural artifacts in the museum’s collection will no longer be invisible.

“It’s an opportunity to say, ‘hey, we steward this for you.’ This is actually owned primarily by the people of Alberta, and we’re thrilled to just finally share with you the stories that have always been here,” Bell said.

The investment to share that cultural history with Calgarians and Albertans, combined with the recent announcement by the museum to make general admission free for everyone, highlights how access to culture is a right he said.

“So think of it all those kids who are going to grow up in Calgary in the next decades, who are going to say ‘where I grew up, we always got to go to the museum, because that was something that was given to us as a right.’ Then they take that with them wherever they live, and they say to those communities, ‘it should be a right here, too,'” Bell said.

Bell said that when people visit cultural centres, like the Glenbow or Telus Spark, or Arts Commons and the National Music Centre, it helps people to learn more about the people in their communities—their neighbours.

“That’s what builds empathy, which actually allows us to get along right sometimes we need to see that other people have different experiences, that other people have gone through different experiences, or even understand our own experiences and our own histories and where we’ve come from,” he said.

“When you start to figure that out together, you actually build… a national identity. You build a national understanding of who we are as Canadians.”

Telus Spark CEO Roderick Tate said that the funding was going towards keeping Calgarians curious and to make the centre accessible to all.

“That’s going towards our Keep Calgary Curious campaign, to support an investment in technology and accessibility, to our re-imagination of what the science centre can do – specifically through new technology and other upgrades to our facility, and again, to bring more experiences in science to the masses,” Tate said.

“We’ve already invested into new spaces that are already delivering in that way, through our digital immersion gallery, as well as our infinity dome theatre, plus many other investments that we’ve been making over the past few years. These are welcoming more people to see the importance and be inspired by science, and really to participate in an engaging and entertaining way.”

He said now, more than ever, dialogue is needed to understand the things that are happening on a day-to-day basis.

“But also to inspire us to participate in the community, and find and be problem solvers to some of the challenges that we face, not only individually, but also maybe on a global scale. Start to plant those seeds for those innovators and the future generation of scientists who are going to help make that change, for all of us to benefit from, as a community,” Tate said.