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Sudbury has been synonymous with the practice of resource extraction; this mode of production has dominated the city’s narratives, its history and its culture. Yet in the last few years, there has been a new current of discourse, one that looks to new models of design-based production that rely on and propose alternative social, spatial and organizational systems. Among the emblems of this transitional moment is Laurentian Architecture, a new school of design well-positioned to promote these new systems in Sudbury and throughout Northern Ontario.

A form of artistic research is underway in Sudbury, preceding and following on the Sudbury Café (September 14-17, 2011). Bik Van der Pol, an artist collective from Rotterdam, conducted the first phase of a longer-term project in which they performed a rock-washing action to question the environmental challenges imposed on the landscape by an economy dependent on the extraction of resources. They are intrigued by the aesthetic nature of blackened rock and have proposed to base the next phases of their project on this.

Also in Sudbury, Miriam Cusson, a theatre director, actor and playwright, will design and direct a theatre work for the Algoma Tavern, a small francophone tavern in near-by Chelmsford. This tavern has historical significance for the region and illuminates the significance of francophone artistic production. Musagetes will also be working with the Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario and the Youth Innovation Centre in Sudbury’s artistic program to build on the work that DodoLab has been doing with the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth.

The report from the Sudbury Café (to be released in October) will take the form of a series of narratives that express the contradictions inherent in Sudbury’s development economically, culturally, and politically. The report traces narrative threads that emerged consistently throughout the four-day Café. These narratives can be summarized as the following:

1. The narrative of the production of culture in Sudbury: wherein the definition of a cultural act is locally specific rather than defined by apex (i.e. institutional) culture that is imported from elsewhere. Francophone culture was created and defined in “l’église, l’école, et le bar.” Aboriginal cultural knowledge takes the form of narratives that are passed from generation to generation; this knowledge is inherent in all.
2. The narrative of the prodigal son: wherein the intergenerational split manifests itself as young people leave Sudbury to gain worldly experience and often return a decade later.
3. The landscape/industry narrative: wherein the political, the economic and the topographical have a conflictual relationship, one that manifests itself in Sudbury’s cultural development (also the subject of Bik Van der Pol’s work).
4. The narrative of Sudbury’s global impact: wherein Sudbury—as a utilitarian city that has contributed to the ravages of war—must recognize the need for healing modalities to alter their narrative of direct and indirect destruction globally.
5. Conclusion: we need to find a narrative that allows us to swerve away from linear, manufactured time and narratives.