2024 Outstanding Calgary Artist Award

I had an incredible October evening at the Jack Singer Concert Hall. Calgary honoured me with the 2024 Outstanding Calgary Artist Award. It was memorable!!! Thank you to Louis and Doug Mitchell, the Banff Center for the Arts, CADA and the City of Calgary and our creative arts community for awarding me this hugely meaningful honour. And thank you to the jury for having recognized my work of letters among the many outstanding artists in all disciplines in our city.

I am humbled and accept this award on behalf of all of those who are continuously making contributions to the quality of life of our citizens, and making their mark in our culture locally, nationally and globally. Some of us are fortunate to be named in these moments, yet all of us are essential, and I am blessed to live a community that lives that truth in its inclusivity and support.

When I arrived in Canada, English was my third language. Yet I have always felt welcome among the shores of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. I would not be the writer I am in this city without all of you who have read, collaborated and supported me all these years so as to bring me to this moment.

I am specially indebted to Richard Harrison who has known and encouraged my work for years, and who, with the following articulate and powerful paragraph captures the essence of where my writing has led me:

Some art is designed to describe the world, other art to change it. Trust the Bluer Skies is of the second kind, which means paulo da costa has taken on the task of writing the world accurately for what it is, and persuasively about what it isn’t – and needs to be. The book is an urgent challenge to the dynamics of a society that under the sway of the male-centred social patterns suppress the non-masculine in the world, but oddly, do their work, in part, by separating men from one another, particularly the men who should be the closest. Fathers and sons.

I would like to leave you with an invitation. Please join me this month, this entire year, in attending an art exhibit, a concert, a play, an opera, an installation, a reading by a Calgary creative. Let us show our love to the amazing arts scene that continuously contributes to the vibrancy of our city.

See ya soon… and about town.

The Legacy of Doug and Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award was established to honour artists who are lauded for their work choose to make Calgary their home. Regardless of career length these artists are acknowledged by their peers around the world for the calibre of their work and their contributions to the arts. They are innovators who have significantly enriched artistic discourse in Canada.

Award recipient:

Paulo da Costa

paulo da costa broadens the discussion of patriarchy’s cost. In lyrical prose he seeks social change the way water changes rock – with a soft voice and endless purpose.