Hello Neighbours
We are Caitlind Brown & Monica Ila, and we’re Ramsay-based artists. For the past 2.5 years, we’ve been working on an immersive mural for the dark and dingy underpass beneath the train lines on 11th-12th Street SE. This underpass is an important pedestrian corridor and the primary connector between Ramsay, our neighbours in Inglewood, and the Bow River. As you may have noticed, it’s currently a terrible place to walk – grey, narrow, under-lit, over-graffitied, and kind of scary. Someday in the future, the Green Line LRT will improve the underpass as part of their redevelopment area – but this is unlikely to happen until 2027 or later. In the meantime, we’ve been planning a way to make the underpass more welcoming to the neighbourhood as soon as possible. Ramsay deserves an iconic entryway!
Together with our collaborator, RCA President Kolja Vainstein, we’ve gained permission from the property owners at the City of Calgary and CPKC (formerly CP Rail) to animate the underpass with a bright & colourful mural – coming in Fall 2024!
The mural design is inspired by hyper-local histories, stories, and myths from the neighbourhood. We asked the community two questions:
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What brings you joy about living in Ramsay?
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What are the secret stories of our neighbourhood?
These questions were open to present and former Ramsay dwellers, as well as our neighbours in Inglewood, and the broader Calgary community. The design of the mural will reflect the responses we received online and by postcard.
Want to contribute? We are still collecting secret stories here. You can add to our online archive of neighbourhood secrets any time throughout our process!
If you want to volunteer or donate to the project, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We need all the help we can get.
Update September 2024
Update September 2024
The time has come to paint our mural! We’re painting the west side of the underpass on both the central-west wall and the west wall which equates to ~4500 SQ FT of space. Our first day of painting with volunteers is Tuesday September 17th (weather permitting) and we’re hoping to finish by our road closure dates on October 1, 2024. If you want to help us through painting our signup sheet is above, or chip in to our project through our GoFundMe (this goes towards an anti graffiti coating and snacks for our volunteers) or simply to spread the word about our project - all help is welcome.
We’ve raised $35,000 in grants and a donation from the Inglewood BIA to put towards the project. We’re incredibly thankful for the support from the Neighbour Grant from the Calgary Foundation, the Good Ideas Grant from Activate YYC, the Tier 1 Arts and Culture Micro-grant from City of Calgary and the Embrace The Outdoors Grant from the Parks Foundation and City of Calgary, last but not least our friends and neighbours at the Inglewood BIA. We are almost funded at this stage and looking to raise the remaining anti-graffiti coating and maintenance expenses through our GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign and support from local businesses.
Are you a business interested in sponsoring our project? Have some extra coffee or snacks - I bet our future volunteers would welcome them. Please get in touch! We'll need all the support we can get this fall and cannot wait to make the space more welcoming and meaningful to the neighbourhood.
You can connect with us through the Ramsay Community Association website, through our Instagram @darkdingyunderpass and our email at darkdingyunderpass@gmail.com. Or sign up to volunteer here!
Support the mural
This mural is funded through grants and donations. We gratefully acknowledge support from Activate YYC, The City of Calgary Arts and Culture Microgrant, The Parks Foundation Embrace the Outdoors Grant, and The Calgary Foundation Neighbour Grant. Thank you to everyone who have contributed to our Crowdfunding Campaign –Emilie, Neeka, Kathryn, Cody, Erin, Katrine, Colin, Lena, Dee, Karen, Joanna, Vanessa, Julia, Kristina, and several anonymous donors!
Special thanks to the Ramsay Community Association, our friends at the City of Calgary, the kind folks at CPKC, Kolja, Jeff, Monica I, Monica B, the sweet team at Cold Garden & Ol’Beautiful, Renilin, Ian, NASARIMA, Tilly, Rebecca & the Inglewood BIA, our growing team of volunteers, and our neighbours for being so dang great.
About the artists
Caitlind r.c. Brown
Co-Lead Artist | www.incandescentcloud.com
Caitlind r.c. Brown is an artist, collaborator, and cultural organizer. Her work is centered in non-traditional art spaces, drawing from DIY practices, institutional critique, relational aesthetics, psychogeography, and the subversive power of novelty. Caitlind graduated from Alberta University of the Arts in 2010, earning an Alumni of Merit Career Award in 2019. Caitlind shares an award-winning sculptural practice with Wayne Garrett, exhibiting artworks across Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, and the Middle East. They currently have permanent public artworks in Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto, winning Mayor’s Art Awards in Calgary and Edmonton in 2019. Parallel to the process of civic art-making, Caitlind is a co-founder and curator of WRECK CITY, a curatorial collective that organizes experimental art exhibitions in alternative spaces. She maintains an annual art series called The Hibernation Project in her home community of Ramsay in Calgary/Mohkinstsis. Caitlind is a firm believer in art’s potential to permeate the everyday, building our human capacity for self-criticality and a clearer vision of the complex, superimposed world(s) that engulf us always.
Monica Ila
Co-Lead Artist | www.monicaila.com
Monica Ila is a multidisciplinary artist from Calgary, AB, who has a strong desire to improve the visual landscape of her hometown. Her work includes murals, sculpture, painting and puppetry. Playfulness is at the heart of everything she makes. Monica has experience creating public work in a variety of mediums and budget scales. She has a keen interest in creating art in communities and in under-utilized spaces. She is currently pursuing a BFA in Sculpture at the Alberta University of the Arts and is a long-standing Board Member of the Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry. Monica has been on the City of Calgary Artist Roster since 2018 and has experience working with large organizations such as schools within the Calgary Board of Education. Her artwork has been sold internationally and exhibited in solo shows within galleries across Canada and public institutions over the last decade. Monica believes that art is instrumental in bringing communities closer together and rediscovering the whimsy within our daily lives.
© 2024 | Ramsay Community Association