The ache to belong is a powerful yet subtle force. We endlessly search for it, grab onto it when we feel it, and to our detriment oftentimes do not question when we finally have it. I have discovered that this sense of belonging blossoms in the presence of artistic expression. Reading poetry, dancing, listening to and making music, crafting with my kid or watching her create, all these things bring me home to myself in ways I sometimes can’t really articulate. It seems that acting on and witnessing creativity can have the same effect on our brains.  

Neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin spoke of this fascinating neurological function in his book This is Your Brain on Music. Through his research, he and his team discovered that the brain activity of people listening to or making music shared striking similarities. The benefits of experiencing music –– regardless of our participation in making it –– speaks to the communal nature of creative expression across all artistic disciplines. Art-making and art-experiencing form a bridge between the artist and audience in a way nothing else can. This bridge I believe is the hardwiring that drives us to create and to appreciate creative expression, which means that by engaging in creativity –– be it mine or others –– evokes a sense of belonging.

Welcome Why We Create, an ongoing collaboration and partnership with Arts Commons that endeavours to explore the creative processes of artists working in Alberta. My name is Kenna Burima, musician, songwriter, producer, educator and writer. I am also a lover and cheerleader of artists.

I am changed when I create and moved when I experience. I can stand motionless in front of a painting and feel seen by canvas. I can sit quietly in a room and experience the movement of a dancer within my bones. We humans are biologically wired for this, and it speaks to the bridge creative expression is between all of us; not only artist and audience, but every single one of us on this planet. 

When I began engaging with the concept of belonging for this column, I sat for a moment and pondered those moments when I sensed –– not hoped, not believed, but felt with my whole body –– that I belonged. Memories showed me that many times the moments were fleeting and yet belonging was etched into me, making me into who I am, but also compelling me to experience it again and again. 

One such moment was slugging backline in the early days of the Sled Island Music and Arts Festival. The job entailed scheduling, coordinating, and delivering gear –– drums, amps and instruments –– to each of the festival venues throughout the city under the watchful and compassionate eye of then-festival technical director Phil Cimolai. I recall specifically sitting in the back of a rented U-Haul with the door up in the parking lot of the Palomino, one of our city’s few remaining music venues. It was delightfully warm and pissing rain. Music lovers were giddily running across streets, quickly locking bikes to racks, and messily stumbling in and out of venues. Through the deluge, I saw city streets that were usually vacant alive, teeming and steaming with young people, voracious for the sense of belonging that cramming into a bar shoulder to shoulder experiencing the same thing can bring. 

From my vantage point, I had never actually felt more at home in my city. I even remember saying to myself “Don’t forget this moment, Kenna. This city can be hard, but in this moment, you belong to this city and this city belongs to you.” Sled Island gave me that. 

With this sense of belonging viscerally at the surface of my skin – memory is a powerful thing – I reached out to Sled Island Executive Director Maud Salvi to talk about it. 

Welcome. Thank you for coming. I'm happy you're here.

Something I always love about festivals is the opportunity to engage with volunteers. It seems like such a simple thing to nurture community with those willing to give their time and energy for free; to be a part of something. Let’s be honest, festivals can only exist because of volunteers. Maud knows this and emphasizes that for her having someone welcoming her at the door is a simple and powerful gesture of community. 

“I’m a pretty introverted person,” admits Maud. “And so, I don't always feel good in public spaces. Just to have someone say hello and acknowledge your presence, I think goes a long way.”

She’s right of course. There are many unassuming ways we can create community and a sense of belonging that is just treating and caring for people with respect and compassion. This understanding shines through Maud when I ask her to share when she experiences that sense of belonging during the festival. 

“I'm in the room and watching people watch a show,” ponders Maud, “They’re either losing their minds, dancing like there’s no one around, or just beaming a smile. I get to witness that, and this common shared experience is something you just can't really replicate.” 

How we gather in community, particularly at festivals is so powerful and the meticulous planning that goes into festivals cannot be overlooked. Those who make the party happen, from the volunteers to the executive director, their roles in the shadows seem to make it possible to ultimately witness moments of joy. Who doesn’t love to take a moment and people-watch at any festival our city hosts? No one owns that joy. No one can claim ownership of that joy, but it is an incredible thing to facilitate. 

Lea Marie Burrows aka Gingerella, co-founder of Calgary’s burlesque Odditease Collective, knows this firsthand. I can still conjure the feeling when I went to my first Odditease show. I was absolutely floored by the careful crafting of the experience. I implore you to check out one of their shows at Congress Coffee –– a venue that’s like a hug –– so you can see not only the power of community but witness the beauty of people truly belonging to themselves on stage. I get a lil teary-eyed just thinking about it honestly. 

“The most important things to me as a burlesque artist are connection with community, self-expression, usually through music and comedy for me,” says Gingerella. “It is a purposeful way for me to create joy in my life.”

It's the Little Things 

Like greeting someone warmly at the door at Sled Island or lovingly laying ground rules for audiences at the beginning of Odditease shows, there is a myriad of little things that can facilitate community and a sense of belonging. Sled Island works hard to listen. Their initiatives over the years have shown this, like moving away from large submission platforms to create their own which drastically reduced fees for artists to get involved; like being at the forefront of addressing how to build safer spaces for the community; like embracing bike culture with racks and lock-ups before the city had even designated bike lanes and lastly, the big one for me, through consistently programming the downtown Royal Canadian Legion No. 1 as the final nightly destination for audiences and artists alike. Through Sled Island, I would boldly say this programming collaboration and inclusion meant a rebirth of sorts for the Legion. Life pulses in and around Legion No. 1 during Sled Island and, dare I say, much of the city. 

“It's alive,” laughs Maud. “Our Calgary, not the Calgary that people like to picture, not the projection of stupid cliches. Sled makes Calgary ours for a moment. It’s all these real people who actually live here. We get to claim this city during Sled and say this is also our city, and it's just as much our city as anyone else’s.”

Points of Connection 

Multi-disciplinary artist Jennifer Crighton, also known as Hermitess, muses on similar concepts of ownership. Jennifer and I have shared stages now for over 20 years from my early days of Woodpigeon and her early days of The Constant C. There’s no shallow end with Jennifer as we commiserate one early morning about death, aging, community, collaboration and of course belonging. Her latest album Death and The Fool is absolutely stunning and is as wild, weird and wonderful as anything she’s ever done. 

“So I feel like I came into my art practice and music practice somewhat through my parent’s background in theatre,” says Jennifer, “which is everyone telling a big story together. I can see how I structure my artwork to give me opportunities to connect with my community because otherwise, I feel very lonely. That's why my project's called Hermitess right? My artistic practice is about points of connection.” 

Artists by the very nature of their work belong to multiple communities. Show me an artist that doesn’t have several points of connection within their sphere. Belonging isn’t linear. These different points of connection end up creating a sort of network of belonging. It seems rather impossible to belong to one person or one thing or one artistic practice. 

“I feel like there's a push-pull to what we do,” admits Jennifer. “And it’s tricky being an artist because there is this need for validation that can also be very alienating from yourself. When I started this project, I felt this intense gratitude for the community that helped me put it together. Now people have been saying to me ‘Oh, are you so happy your album is out now?’ and it’s hard to explain that once an album is released, I go through a kind of mourning process because it is the end of all that community activity.”

Jennifer’s admission of this messy inner process of creation, collaboration and release reminds me that there can be no belonging without vulnerability, and Gingerella agrees. 

“Burlesque makes me feel vulnerable in the very best ways,” admits Gingerella. “It makes me feel brave, alive, and meaningful. I spent a lot of my years feeling like I don't truly 'belong' anywhere, but with Odditease and burlesque I can show up exactly as I am and I am appreciated for it. I am not everyone's cup of tea and that's 100% ok, but with burlesque I am surrounded by such inspirational talent I can't help but glow.”

Make sure to check out Odditease’ next event, Camp Odditease on June 21 at CongressCoffee, and catch Hermitess at Sled Island June 18 – 22, 2025.