It was a bold and unprecedented undertaking, moving an entire fire truck into a staid and conventional book room. But bold and unprecedented were kind of the point for Calgary Public Library when it set out to upend patrons’ experience of the place by plonking a decommissioned fire rig square in the middle of its largest location in 2016. The flames it would extinguish in its unexpected environment would be of irrelevance and indolence and all the obsolete inheritances of libraries past.

The truck, which would offer a unique playscape for the kids whose boisterous presence had too long been quashed in this serious setting, would be a centerpiece for an evolved philosophy that embraced the Library’s role as a public hub, swapping out its worthy utility as a facilitator of transactional operations alone. With this unconventional development, the Library stepped into its natural place in a civic landscape—and then stepped away from the wheel to let citizens steer the organization.

The fire truck experiment, says Calgary Public Library CEO Sarah Meilleur, was a roaring success. Calgary Fire Department’s Engine 23, in its converted iteration as an Early Learning Center, delivered the space back to its roots as a nucleus of community engagement and improvement devoted to serving the needs of an eclectic customer base.

It’s a fire that might be similarly lit under arts organizations that are currently sputtering in the coals of obscurity and directionlessness. A blistering reacquaintance with their raison d’être is just the thing so many stodgy, precious cultural destinations need to reignite their spark.

The relevance of arts organizations, as measured by a range of metrics, including the triple pillars of attendance, sales, and philanthropy, has been on the decline for decades, and while some might find it convenient to blame COVID-19 for audiences’ apparent lack of interest in returning, the fact is the notorious virus simply accelerated the inevitable. None of our current problems should come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to historic trends in audience participation within non-profit arts organizations. People have long been tired of the dynamic that defines the patron-artist relationship.

After all, arts organizations’ offerings have always been pretty prescribed. What I mean by that is: we tell you when our event starts, where it is, how much it costs, and so on. We are so in control of what we supply that the only role you have as a consumer is to say yes or no. And it is because of this narrowness of offering that we now have a problem. People are saying no because they can consume so many other things on their terms and their turf—why should they support what we’re insisting they support, especially since what we’re insisting on is not informed by any of our outreach to discover their interests? At any rate, we scramble in response to their indifference, sputtering about free tickets, deeper subscription discounts, and on-site ice cream. We’re on the defensive, wildly spinning to make an undesirable product appealing, when it’s really too little, too late, and when we have, in fact, been responsible for the demise of the demand all along.

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Arts organizations’ value propositions have historically been about the artist. If they had been about people, like the Library’s is, we might’ve been able to evolve as nimbly as they have. Today, the value proposition for Calgary Public Library reads simply: “Everyone Belongs at the Library. Your Library is a place for people to access ideas, inspiration, and insight so that they can realize their potential. Everyone belongs at the Library, because the Library belongs to you.” Their value proposition is fundamentally inclusive. Or at least it is today. For all I know, the Library’s value proposition fifty years ago was all about the books. But something forced them to revisit that framework and update it. Arts organizations might behave correspondingly.

Providing 240,000 square feet of functional, flexible, and exquisitely designed space in the burgeoning cultural hotspot of the city’s East Village, Calgary Public Library’s new downtown location is home to a physical collection of more than 300,000 books, dozens of free community meeting areas, a performance hall, a café, outdoor plazas, a children’s library, dedicated spaces for teens, recording studios, and much more. The flagship branch of the city’s system, Calgary’s stunning Central Library is a key destination for library-goers—and, more importantly, for those people who have lost their inclination to go at all. Its five-year, $245-million construction, which Architectural Digest named one of the most anticipated projects of 2018 and the New York Times featured among its “Fifty-Two Places to Travel” in 2019, produced an elevated library experience and destination for Calgarians and tourists alike, attracting more than a million visitors in its first seven months alone.

More than its physical beauty, though, this library is a standout for its attention to a mandate whose shifting nature it has embraced with grace. If libraries had been as immovable as much of the arts community continues to be, insisting on a self-centered model of operation in which they alone call the shots, they’d be out of business. Instead, libraries have revisited their mission of people-centric service with a fresh commitment to fostering communities around the sharing of knowledge and ideas, more critical than ever in a post–COVID-19 scene. “We emerge from years of disruption and transition and see a community that needs us more than ever,” Meilleur declares. “We are a city facing urgent issues that require many voices around the table. That table where everyone is welcome is your public library. . . . Our promise is that everyone belongs at the Library because the Library belongs to you.”

Alex Sarian is the president & CEO of Arts Commons in Calgary, where he leads the largest cultural infrastructure project in the country’s history. Sarian was born in Toronto, raised in Buenos Aires, and spent 18 years in New York City, most notably as a senior executive at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. With a background in education, he is deeply committed to making the transformative power of the arts accessible to all. www.alexsarian.com.

Excerpted in part from The Audacity of Relevance: Critical Conversations on the Future of Arts and Culture by Alex Sarian. Copyright © by Alex Sarian, 2024. Published by ECW Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Audacity of Relevance: Critical Conversations on the Future of Arts and Culture was published on Oct. 1.