Car-Free Adventures in Calgary: BUMP edition
"Transforming our bland, white washed downtown into something that better represents our diversity and depth as a city."
After a busy few weekends in the mountains admiring the larches, this week we’re staying in the city and adventuring sans vehicle.
Car-Free Adventures in Calgary will be a reoccurring occasional segment in Go Outside. (So if you have any experiences we should check out, please send us an e-mail or comment below and do stay tuned for when we take the Ctrain to ski within city limits.)
Wander around Calgary’s inner city these days and you’ll likely notice a lot more colour. Big and bright murals enliven many walls, turning previously boring buildings into places you stop and stare at.
Most of these murals have appeared in the last five years, as part of the Beltline Urban Murals Project, aka BUMP. The community driven project started in 2017 with four murals. Today, there’s over 100! And that includes the world’s tallest mural, completed this year and pictured below. Plus every summer there’s a BUMP festival that includes live music, graffiti jams, artist talks and mural tours.
The world’s tallest painted mural, by graffiti artist Mirko Reisser (DAIM)
This artwork exists because of two Beltline residents, Peter Oliver and Peter Schryvers.
“(BUMP) was founded to address the severe lack of mural art in Calgary compared to other great cities like Montreal, Vancouver, Bogota, Berlin, etc,” Peter Oliver told us. “Obviously, we never thought it would actually become this successful. Or that we would actually be producing works on the same scale and quality as these other great mural cities.”
Peter Schryvers said he co-founded BUMP because he’s always loved public art and wanted more Calgarians to experience it. “Murals are great because everyone can enjoy them just walking about,” he said. “What I never expected was for it to grow this big, this fast.”
The BUMP website has a great mural gallery and map, making it quite easy to plan your own art tour. That’s just what Cailynn recently did, travelling by bike around downtown to check out some of the new 2022 murals.
Not sure where to start? We asked BUMP co-founder Schryvers to pick favourites, and he chose ALFALFA’s “The Haretoise” at 823 10 Avenue SW, Alex Kwong’s mural at 320 17 Ave SW, and Fluke’s giant mural at 1039 17 Ave SW (which he adds was logistically complicated, involving three lifts working at a time and road closures on busy 17 Avenue).
Cailynn has a particular fondness for murals featuring bicycles, including by Tyler Lemermeyer at 735 12th Ave SW, Megan Oldhues at 1240 17 Ave SW and Mike Hooves at 5720 Silver Ridge Dr NW (this 2022 mural was made through CBC’s Battle of the Burbs Contest, where Calgarians voted for the best suburb in the city and Cailynn and Annalise’s old stomping grounds Silver Springs won the prize of a mural).
While in BUMP’s early years, Annalise had the cougar at 1410 11 Ave SW by Curtis Van Charles as a favourite, it’s becoming harder and harder to pick favourites as more and more stunning pieces are added. It’s incredible that this project started with just four murals in 2017, paid for via a community investment fund. The project has grown substantially and the murals themselves seem to keep getting better and bigger.
The amount of colour, creativity and just plain fun the BUMP artwork adds to our city can not be overstated. And, BUMP has branched out beyond blank walls. Last year, BUMP partnered with the city to have local artists paint parking barriers and container parklets, during the height of social distancing patio season.
“Honouring Life Givers North to South” by La Morena and bb iskwew
For a city that’s had more than its fair share of public art debacles, BUMP stands out. Recently, it was featured in Alberta’s continual efforts to lure Torontonians to move west — something that can’t be said of the Blue Ring, say, or the Bowfort Towers.
Oliver credits the fact the murals are celebrated by Calgarians to a few factors. “It is probably also a reflection of the growing sophistication of Calgarians and the appetite to transform our bland, white washed downtown into something that better represents our diversity and depth as a city,” he said.
We’ve been big fans of BUMP for years. Yes, we love going out to the mountains, but there’s also something special about leaving the vehicle at home, wandering around your city’s downtown and seeing impressive art on so many buildings. Kudos to Peter Oliver and Peter Schryvers for pursing an idea that has changed our city for the better.
As Oliver says, “The BUMP Festival demonstrates that when it comes to public art there really is no upper limit for a city. More is always better.”
What’s your favourite BUMP mural? Let us know in the comments below.
“Violet King” by Curtia Wright
P.S. We’ll be taking next week off. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
...also, the pond below the Children's Hospital connects well to Edworthy Park pathways.
I am glad that you two are writing again! David Peyto is an author who has written books about using the LRT to connect to walks in Calgary and about extended Calgary walks. You may want to look up his suggestions. I really like walking through the pathways of Varsity. This was also a great place to set up a Scavenger Hunt for Grandkids. These pathways also connect to the Research Park in the NW which has a lovely pond full of ducks during the summer months.