COMMUNITY

Kingston, including Queen's University, is renowned for its active artistic and cultural scene.

Situated within a 2 1/2 hour drive of some 15 million potential audience members, our city has a powerful opportunity to become a cultural anchor for the region.

Already, more than 2.6 million people visit Kingston each year, and the city attracts more than 125,000 meeting and conference-motivated trips each year.

Increased artistic programming, including the showcasing of national and international talents, within the new Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts will grow the cultural tourism of the region and generate significant economic benefits for local business. Arts and culture are widely recognized as a powerful factor in building strong communities and economies.

The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts' superior acoustic and recording facilities will help to attract as residents and visitors outstanding national and international talent, spur creativity across all sectors of the economy and bring people together locally, globally and virtually.

While here, these artists can provide Queen’s students and community artists with one-of-a-kind learning experiences - workshops, master classes, and guest lectureships that deliver a rich and true reflection of what their art involves.

Our community, in turn, will use and build on this great resource, expanding the role of the arts, and attracting more artists and patrons to fuel the knowledge economy.

All of us in Drama couldn't be more excited about the inter-disciplinary opportunities that the new Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts will be providing for our program. Not only will the diverse creative spaces within the Centre stimulate peer learning and greater collaboration among all of the Arts students, but it will provide a much needed home for enhanced interaction with the larger community from whom we all have much to learn. The future of all the Arts lies in innovation, outreach and accessibility - and the new Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts will be at the heart of our growth in all of these areas. Tim Fort, Head, Department of Drama

I began my life as a theatre artist in Kingston, with Theatre 5 and Domino Theatre, and then Queen's Drama Department; all of these nurtured me as an artist, and for this I am grateful. I am thrilled to learn about the new Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, intrigued by the thought of the drama faculty and students having their own theatre in that glorious location, and especially excited about the prospect of community access to the site. This project is thrilling to me because it is all about the nurturing of future Canadian theatre artists who will have an impact not just in Canada, but throughout the world. Judith Thompson, Arts'76, Award-winning Playwright