Showcasing Calgary’s New Identity: Blue Sky City
August 14, 2025 | Calgary, Events, What's HappeningA city’s identity is more than a catchy slogan
It’s the living expression of the cultures, values, and stories of the people who call it home. Being able to showcase that identity is no small feat. How do you honour a city’s history while embracing its diversity and evolution? But also, what role can the local creative economy play in establishing a new brand identity?
In 2024, Tourism Calgary set out to answer those questions with the launch of “Blue Sky City,” a brand that’s as much about Calgarians as it is about the city’s iconic skies. It celebrates our rich cultural fabric, our spirit of innovation, and our openness to the world.
The brand was crafted in collaboration with more than 100 organizations across 26 sectors. Its visual identity draws inspiration from beadwork, a powerful symbol of Calgary as a place of confluence, where peoples, lands, cultures, and ideas meet. Each bead represents an individual story, and together they form something greater than the sum of their parts.
Blue Sky Arts
To bring “Blue Sky City” to life, Tourism Calgary—supported by Calgary Arts Development and RISE UP Calgary—launched the Blue Sky City Creative Challenge. This initiative invited artists across multiple disciplines to interpret the new brand through their own lens, creating authentic, immersive works that tell Calgary’s story in vibrant and unexpected ways. The five selected “Blue Sky Arts” pieces realize Calgary’s new brand identity by transforming spaces across the city with a statement on what living in a Blue Sky City means to each artist. We were thrilled to manage the callout process and lead the jury for the selection of these installations.
Last month the first Blue Sky Arts project, “Drop of Sunshine” by Leia Guo, an interactive art experience with cyanotype printing, created with the power of the sun, was showcased on Canada Day at The Confluence and later at the Ismaili Stampede Breakfast.
This month, we’ll get to see “boundless” by Brenda Luong at Globalfest (August 14–23), another interactive piece with movable beads, representing how we all work together to make Calgary what it is.
Blue Sky Arts showcases the best of our city’s local creative economy and we’re thrilled to be able to support this incredible project. To learn more about Blue Sky Arts including all the upcoming art experiences, visit Tourism Calgary’s website.
