Photo by Colton Mckee

By Hayley Ferguson

Esplanade Upgrades

The Esplanade receives over $500,000 in federal funding

Aug 30, 2019 | 3:38 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – The federal government has announced they have granted the Esplanade over $500,000 in funding for “cultural infrastructure upgrades.”

The centre will receive support from two different federal funding programs.

“The first grant that we received was through the Gas Tax Fund which allowed us to do an LED upgrade for the lighting in the theatre. As well as some work in the galleries and some new walls.” Said Trampas Brown, the superintendent of operations and programming for the city.

Brown says that not only will the upgrades keep theatre up to update, but also have significant environmental savings.

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“We’re replacing some old fixtures that were using 4500 watts of power with new ones that are using about 120. So it’s a great, great boom for us.” He said.

The second grant the Esplanade received was from Canadian Heritage with the Canada Cultural Spaces grant.

“That allowed us to finalize the theatre LED upgrade as well as the control system. Then as well we will be doing some work over in our collections storage to help us preserve artifacts and the cities collections.” Brown said.

Nearly 100,000 people visit the Esplanade every year and Brown says that receiving this funding shows how well the arts are doing in Alberta.

“It’s nice to be on the map and see that we’re getting some of that funding.” He continued. “We have an incredibly active scene. We’re really getting on the map internationally. You can see that with our season coming through this fall that there’s a lot of international pieces coming through that love playing in venues like this. Where we’ve got a really responsive audience and a great space to work in.”

For Brown, one of the shows he’s most excited for this season is “Backbone”, which stops in Medicine Hat in November.

“It’s a circus piece out of Austria that is by far the best piece of circus I’ve ever seen in my life. And it is simply incredible to see some of these performers.” He said.

Brown says that the 2019/2020 season program will be out for the public within the next few weeks.