Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts

Local art centre brings new life to Edmonton through art

The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts helps Edmontonians with disabilities express themselves

Photo Credit: Breann Gurney
Members of the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts, gather together as they work on create their art. The centre support adults with developmental disabilities in their creative endeavours.

Brenda Christiansen greeted visitors with a warm welcoming smile as she ushered them into the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts. Some are scheduled visitors here to paint or create art, others are simple onlookers intending to just pass by until curiosity drew them in.

Christiansen has been with the Nina for the past eleven years and worked as the studio manager for the last two years. She became studio manager in 2016, after the centre experienced large growth. Both the staff and membership numbers grew, at which point Christiansen was assigned the task of looking inward and sharing responsibility with other team members.

Photo Credit: Michaela Ream

Brenda Christiansen, studio manager at the Nina.

Photo Credit: Breann Gurney

The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts opened in 2003, in honour of Nina Haggerty, an Albertan

diagnosed with polio.

Haggerty was born in the early 1900s, and when she was diagnosed, her mother placed her in a home for “mental defectives.” There she lived for 50 years until the SKILLS Society, an organization supporting individuals with disabilities, helped her leave the institution and live in the community. After leaving the institution, she began to take art classes and discovered an unbridled amount of joy in the process.

After she died, SKILLS helped open the centre with the intention of sharing the joy Haggerty felt while making art with others.

Christiansen herself is also an artist, and has been as she puts it, since “forever.” 

“I have my masters in painting and I was teaching at the university,” Christiansen said. “I was teaching painting until a couple of years ago as well as a sessional instructor. And then just decided that no, I was going to put all my focus in here at the Nina.”

Photo Credit: Breann Gurney

Clays, pottery, and textiles are all available at the Nina. 

Christiansen often moves from room to room to check up on members.

Before she got her masters however, Christiansen worked as a graphic design artist for 25 years and for 12 years she owned her own graphics company. She worked on advertisement, layout, newspaper, books, maps and illustrations, and in the days of pre-computers, all the work was done by hand. After a time however, Christiansen decided it was time to move on and pursue her goal of getting her Bachelors of Fine Arts (BFA), a goal she had set to achieve by the time she was 40. “Well, that was long enough of somebody else telling you what they wanted and its was just time to make what I wanted.”

At 44, Christiansen had achieved her goal but after getting her BFA, she decided that she “liked that so much” that she went further and ended up getting her masters as well. “You know, you’re never too old to start.”

Nowadays, work at the Nina still keeps her as busy as ever, though she still has a studio in her home and does some painting, alongside her current exhibit showing at the Blue Chair café.

The buzz of conversation and presence of creativity at work, is dimmed down only as we moved into the spacious gallery located just to the left of the entrance of the Nina. Had we turned right, into the main space of the Nina, we would have been greeted with the sight of artists hard at work and a selection of different rooms to enter; each with a different creative theme. Sort of like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory and his many rooms of creation, only in this case it’s all art themed.
Clay works, painting, pottery, fabrics, textiles, drawings, you name it and the Nina probably has a room for it.

However, in the gallery, walls that are normally decorated with various art or photographs, now stand white and empty; just waiting for the next rotation of featured art to go up.

Photo Credit: Breann Gurney

Christiansen poses with a art piece of one of the artists

The program for citizens with developmental disabilities has seen its share of achievement and featured art since its doors were opened, including granting a number of the Nina’s artists the ability to show their artwork at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

“Without a venue like the Nina and the support of an organization like this, how many artists would have had a show at the AGA at enterprise square a few years ago?” said Christiansen.

Members of the Nina are given the opportunity to create art as they see fit, as the Nina doesn't offer lecture-based classes for art. The staff support artists if questions arise, but shy away from making their mark on the pieces. Any art that is created as such, is solely the work of the artists themselves. This is done purposefully, as creative

expression and freedom are held highly at the Nina and is reflection in its vision statement:

“All people have the right to achieve their highest potential, which includes the right to creative expression. Creativity lies within everyone and can be powerfully expressed through the arts.”

The power through the arts has not just worked its magic through the artists at the Nina, but it has likewise helped stir some life back into the Alberta Avenue neighborhood, which is also seeing an increase in an arts and culture presence.

“The revitalization of this neighborhood and turning it back into a family friendly

neighborhood like it was for a long, long time has really been driven by that whole arts

community, I think” Christiansen said. “And I think it’s just, its slow but it’s ongoing. The

momentum hasn’t stopped. And I think we’re a really vital part of that, you know we have big

windows, people walk by and look in and see what’s happening. And they’ll just come in off the

street.”

“We’re giving them a voice,” Christiansen added, speaking of the Nina artists. “And access to the broader arts and culture section of Edmonton and letting people know that there’s some fantastic work being made in here.”

Photo Credit: Michaela Ream
One of the Nina members shows off her fabrics project.
Fabrics is one of many offered arts available at the Nina.