No matter how ambitious the undertaking, or how daunting the task, Québec 2008’s senior executive director Josée Laurence hopes that if one lasting impression remains etched in the mind of those who converge on the city for its 400th birthday celebrations, it will be an image of countless – and highly memorable – gatherings:
“When the Société du 400e anniversaire de Québec launched on its mission, we looked at how comparable events elsewhere in North America had approached their commemorations. We even looked at world expos, and we sought guidance from regional stakeholders representing economic, social, tourism and cultural realms, through consultations with a view to uncovering what their collective aspirations were.
“People told us the celebrations had to impart, above all, a legacy for the geographic territory of Québec City. Secondly, it became clear that we needed to instil in the population a need to participate in the events beyond just simply attending them. This desire for community engagement emanated vividly from our findings.”
How this would be achieved, Laurence explains, is through a strategic layering of activities over the entire 2008 calendar year. “This runs against conventional wisdom which usually calls for concentrated energy over well‑defined events and staging areas. But the richness of the environment in which we operate here warranted a more inclusive approach.”
Laurence mentions the Québec winter carnival as an example of these riches. As a long‑established signature event, the carnival is well‑positioned to nourish the city’s birthday celebrations. Similarly, the Summit of La Francophonie, scheduled for October 2008, could hardly have been excluded from the festivities, so organizers had to opt for a wider than usual calendar window.
“This approach could only work if our program also featured particularly powerful moments designed to rekindle the public’s interest in the birthday celebrations," says Laurence. "These special 'moments' will be interspersed with an array of more niche‑oriented events inspired by our community of communities, for which we issued a call for proposals. The challenge was to treat equitably the proposals submitted, knowing they would originate from different groups with varying resources!”
To ease the process, project categories were established. One encompassed annual events like the Québec City Summer Festival and the New France Festival. “We counted 29 events and sent organizers documentation inviting them to submit proposals.” There was another category targeting cultural institutions like the Québec City Opera and the Symphony Orchestra. A third category was identified with a special mandate in mind, Laurence explains:
“After 400 years, we wished to acknowledge the dynamic nature of our society. Therefore it was felt areas like history and heritage, arts, culture, sports, leisure, the environment, science and technology should be mined because we believe a 400th anniversary is not only the opportunity to look back, but also an invitation to explore today’s reality with a view of tomorrow. We needed to call on our youth to consider some of the challenges ahead in the next centuries.”
To make it possible for these mostly volunteer stakeholders to submit projects in these fields, Laurence’s team issued two waves of calls for proposals: “We received 85 projects as a result of the first wave in 2005; and in the second wave in 2006, we received 232 projects. We established an advisory committee tasked with assessing the quality and relevance of projects; in the end, we retained 16 proposals from the first wave we felt would resonate with the spirit of gathering we wished to impart to the celebrations, and we are awaiting the results of the second wave."
The theme of the gathering (in French: “les rencontres”) will be the common thread throughout the year. “At a very fundamental level, this allows us to address the whole domain of the human experience through time. The celebrations must satisfy a longing to touch hearts, to create significant encounters between inhabitants and visitors. We live in times during which many have been to Last Vegas and have seen the greatest shows on earth. How do we differentiate our celebrations in a meaningful way with a program budget of 90 million dollars?”
Organizers have designated Espace 400e as the official plaza for the celebrations. "It ties in the water’s edge to a physical space within the city for gatherings, punctuated by exhibits and activities that support the experience. The gardens and the picnic areas; the bistros there will reinforce the theme. Even the outdoor furniture will be configured in a way that stimulates encounters and dialogue among people, instead of isolating them from one another.”
With this approach firmly in mind, Québec 2008 organizers have even asked event and conference management companies to submit theming proposals featuring the anniversary, that could be adopted by event organizers as market‑ready solutions for, say, a pharmaceutical industry conference, to integrate some of the commemorative flavour into their convention program.
Keeping the excitement alive!
Sustaining interest for the entire year will be a challenge, Laurence admits: "Espace 400e will be in operation from June to mid‑October. For this to work there must be a renewal of the theme, week after week, so that we instil in visitors from Québec the desire to come back. We are associated with Robert Lepage and his company Ex Machina, which we have mandated to produce a multi‑media show to be projected across the grain silos that line the basin for a period spanning 40 summer evenings starting at dusk. This unusual screen has a surface 600‑meters long – it will be the most ambitious such projection ever produced in the world!”
Needless to say, Josée Laurence is confident that key moments such as these, along with opening and closing events featuring the Cirque du Soleil, will all contribute to making sure Québec’s 400th is well‑received and fondly remembered as a place and time where so many individuals and groups have had so much to celebrate, and so many ways to do so.
Comments