The Banff Centre
Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre is situated on a dramatic mountain site on the slopes of Tunnel Mountain in Banff National Park, Canada. This site is valued worldwide, as it is part of Canada's first National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a place of great spiritual significance for indigenous people. Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre (MC) is uniquely positioned to respond to this powerful mountain setting through its mountain culture and environment programming and, in doing so, has distinguished itself as an institution that is unique in the world.
Building on the original base of the 29-year-old Banff Mountain Film Festival, for eight years, Mountain Culture has been creating opportunities for the public to share – and be inspired by – mountain experiences, ideas and visions, through a range of programs based in the arts and the mountain environment. Complex mountain issues are approached in an integrated and inter-disciplinary way. No other organization in the world offers the broad combination of mountain programming found at the Centre, including literature, film, environmental and social issues, spirituality, visual arts, exploration, adventure and mountaineering. MC has developed a strong environmental program component, working with world-class partners. Some programs are presented onsite. Others are global in outreach.
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Festivals, Competitions and Tours
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At the core of MC programming are the Banff Mountain Book Festival, Banff Mountain Film Festival and the World Tour. These are the longest-established programs in Mountain Culture and have huge public engagement with a wide array of stakeholders in the global mountain community - from mountain cultural content providers to environmentalists to educators to the outdoor business community. They have built the MC’s enviable global network of mountain experts and engaged audiences, they have an unusually loyal group of partners, and they provide spin-off resources of dollars, content and audiences that enable the start-up of other mountain programs.
Banff Mountain Film Festival
Founded in 1976, this annual 7-day event in Banff is the premier international mountain film festival in the world. It includes world-class featured speakers, seminars on current issues in mountain culture and environment, film screenings in multiple venues and a juried competition. In 2004, 331 films from 46 countries were entered. Approximately 58 entries (one in six) were chosen as finalists and screened before an international jury and an audience of 8000.
Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour
Partnering year-round with local hosts, the World tour presents 315 screenings in 230 cities in 30 countries, showcasing the best films from the Festival to an audience of more than145,000 people. The World Tour is an excellent vehicle for spreading the message of Mountain Culture to an international audience. In showcasing the creative excellence of mountain filmmakers from around the world, it provides an important distribution function for them. The reach of the tour has firmly established Banff as the most influential mountain film festival in the world. The North American Tour audience has more than doubled in audience size over the past 7 years, from a base of 50,000 in 1997. The International tour has tripled in size from 10 to 30 countries.
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Banff Mountain Book Festival and Mountain Voices Speakers' Bureau
Founded in 1994, the Book Festival is a 5-day annual celebration of the best in mountain literature. It features world-class speakers, seminars for authors, editors, publishers and readers, readings and book signings, as well as a juried competition. The Banff Mountain Book Festival is the largest and most respected of its kind in the world, providing authors with an international audience. The speakers' bureau tours throughout the year in Canada and the United States.
Banff Mountain Photography Competition
An annual international photography competition with 3300 images entered from 31 countries (2003). Awards are presented in six categories. The competition's award-winning images provide content for exhibitions, both in-house and touring in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. The exhibition appears each year at the world's leading mountain museum, the Museo della Montagna in Torino, Italy.
Exhibitions and Exhibition Tours
An annual program of approximately three to four photography exhibitions mounted by MC at The Banff Centre and then toured - including with major partners such as National Geographic, the North Face.
Banff Mountain Culture Grants
An annual competitive program awarding a total of $23,000 in 2004, the Grants Program supports projects that creatively communicate the nature and culture of mountains to a broad public audience. Ranging from mountain environment photography exhibitions to the documentation of ancient Tibetan dance techniques, the award winners reflect the diversity of the world’s mountain cultures. The international jury reviewed 60 grant applications from 12 countries in the 2004 program. Approximately seven grants are awarded each year.
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Banff Mountain Lecture Series
An annual series featuring 4-6 MC grant recipients and others, these lectures bring top international speakers to a local Bow Valley and Calgary audience.
Book Publishing
Annual book projects connected with signature programs, done in partnership with external publishers and Banff Centre Press.
2000 – Voices From the Summit – with National Geographic books
2001 – Human Use Management in Mountain Areas proceedings
2002 – Ecological and Earth Sciences in Mountain Areas proceedings
2002 – Extreme Landscapes – with National Geographic books
2003 – Whose Water Is It? – with National Geographic books
2003 – Sustainable Mountain Communities proceedings
2003 – Mountains as Water Towers Summit proceedings
2003 – Italian Voices from the Summit book – with the Museo della Montagna
2005 – Interdisciplinary Research and Management in Mountain Areas proceedings
2005 – Mountain Communities Conference proceedings
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Summits and Smyposia
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These programs define specific issues pertaining to mountain communities, bring together recognized leaders and experts from different disciplines and perspectives. They attempt to find mutual understanding across complex issues by defining areas of common interest, concern, and conflict. They facilitate cross-disciplinary public dialogue in several ways: face-to-face, online and through substantial national and international media coverage. Books and proceedings published in partnership with external partners ensure a wide dissemination of knowledge.
Banff Mountain Summits
Annual/biennial summits of the world’s foremost mountain experts, presenting new knowledge, issues, and creativity.
Banff Mountain Summit – The Future of Mountaineering - 2000
Extreme Landscapes Summit – International Year of Mountains - 2002
Mountains as Water Towers - November 23 - 26, 2003 – International Year of Fresh Water – the Summit explored issues surrounding the great storage houses of fresh water in mountain regions of the world.
Cultures at Risk Summit – August 2005 – celebrating traditional indigenous mountain cultures.
Mountain Leadership Summit – November 2006 – in partnership with UIAA, incelebration of the centennial of the Alpine Club of Canada.
Rosenberg Water Policy Forum - 2006 - One of a biennial series of water policy fora, organized in conjunction with UC-Berkeley, with 50 invited top-level water scholars and policy-makers from around the world. Theme will be management of upland water sources.
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Mountain Communities Symposia
Annual meetings of researchers, land managers, politicians and interested public, engaging in facilitated discussion of key mountain science and management issues. Case studies allow direct participation in problem-solving by all attendees.
Human Use Management in Mountain Areas – 2001
Ecological and Earth Sciences in Mountain Areas - 2002
Sustainable
Mountain
Communities - 2003 - explored issues ranging from managing growth to minimizing pollution.
Interdisciplinary Research and Management in Mountain Areas - 2004 - international research in areas ranging from flora and fauna to hydrology and climate change issues.
Governance and Decision-Making in Mountain Areas – 2005 –systems of land use planning and management, incorporating science into policy-making, regional, multi-jurisdictional cooperation, ensuring mountain areas' profile on the national scene
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| Other Mountain Culture Programs |
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Archives
The Banff Centre Archives holds an extensive Mountain Culture collection: over 500 books and over 1000 mountain videos (the world’s largest collection). Long-term plans include digitizing this archive, and making it available through e-commerce to potential users over the Internet.
Network Programming
For seven years, the Banff Centre has profitably marketed the films from the Festival to various networks for programming, while paying suitable licensing fees to the filmmakers. It has provided a steady stream of royalty payments for mountain filmmakers in its role as distributor.
Mountain Forum
In 2002, the Banff Centre launched the North American node of the Mountain Forum, an international e-network of those concerned with sustainable mountain development.
Radical Reels Tour
A new, high-adrenaline version of the World Tour, Radical Reels grew from the successful introduction of a Radical Reels program at the Film Festival. It was launched in 2003
Mountain residencies
The Mountain Grants program will be expanded in scope to include mountain residencies for mid-career authors and filmmakers, environmentalists and scientists, to provide a catalyst for the creation of new work. In 2005, two new residencies are planned, one in mountain filmmaking and one in mountain writing.
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| Appendix A |
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Bio of Bernadette McDonald
Vice President and Director Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre
Bernadette McDonald is Vice President, Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre. Within that division, Bernadette is director of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, now in its 31st year, and founding director of the Banff Mountain Book Festival.
Bernadette has degrees in English Literature and Music, with specialization in performance and analytical theory. She spent two years in the music program at The Banff Centre performing contemporary music with her ensemble, Fusion 5.
Bernadette has taught music privately and at the college level. She spent six years with
Jasper
National Park
before moving to the Banff Mountain Film Festival. She has been director of the festival since 1988, as well as acting as festival juror on festivals around the world. During her time with the Festival, it has grown from a weekend film event to a twelve-month, global touring program with an international program of films, authors, speakers, and exhibitions spanning seven continents. The Festival has appeared in over 30 countries on seven continents to tens of thousands of audience members and millions of television viewers. Bernadette is the co-editor of Voices From the Summit: The World’s Great Mountaineers on the Future of Climbing, published by National Geographic, is author of a chapter on heli-skiing in a National Geographic publication, is editor of Extreme Landscape, and co-editor of Whose Water Is It. She is author of Ritratti dalle vette, alpinisti fotografati da Craig Richards published in Italian in 2003. Her most recent book is I’ll Call You in Kathmandu: The Elizabeth Hawley Story, published in 2005 by The Mountaineers Books.
Bernadette is past chair of the board of trustees for the
Whyte
Museum
of the Canadian Rockies, and a founding member of the International Alliance for Mountain Film. She was an invited speaker at the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2001 to launch International Year of Mountains.
Bernadette spends most of her discretionary time in the mountains: climbing, ski touring, hiking and riding. These travels have taken her to the mountains of
Japan
, South America, Africa, Europe, and
Tibet
, as well as the North American Ranges.
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| Appendix B |
Bio of Leslie Taylor
Associate Director,
Environment
Mountain
Culture at The
Banff
Centre
Leslie Taylor is Associate Director, Mountain Environment, of Mountain Culture at the Banff Centre. She has been with MC since 1998, and is responsible for environmental programming, the Banff Mountain Grants program, the North American Mountain Forum,
Banff
's participation in the International Mountain Partnership, and several other mountain programs. She is the lead editor of Human Use Management in Mountain Areas, Ecological and Earth Sciences in Mountain Areas, and Sustainable Mountain Communities, and was guest editor of the May 2002 issue of Mountain Research and Development, a Swiss-based journal.
Raised as an “army brat” in
Canada
, the
U.S.
and Europe, Leslie first came to
Banff
in 1968 as a ballet student at the Banff School of Fine Arts. After receiving an honours degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology from the
University
of
Guelph
in 1973, she spent 14 years in provincial and national parks in
Western Canada
. She was one of the first two women hired as full-time field staff by British Columbia Provincial Parks, working for them in
Victoria
,
Mt.
Seymour
, and
Mt.
Robson
. She finished her parks career as acting Superintendent of Banff National Park, Canada’s oldest and busiest national park.
In the fall of 1989, Leslie was elected mayor of the newly-incorporated Town of
Banff
, and served for two terms before choosing not to seek re-election in the fall of 1995. Other non-political community service: SAIT Board of Governors (1988 - 1990), Banff National Park Health Unit Board (1987 - 1989), Banff Mineral Springs Hospital Board (1987 - 1989), Board of the Peter and Catharine Whyte Foundation (1996-2002), Town of
Banff Transportation Advisory Committee
(1995 - 1997), and the Banff Community High School Council (2002 - present).
In addition, for the past seventeen years, Leslie has served clients throughout
Western Canada
as a trainer and facilitator.
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