Sea Change: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia design competition

Over six months ago, a world-altering pandemic stormed our society, our ways of thinking, and our sense of well-being. In early June, the Black Lives Matter movement swept the globe, and called for a necessary paradigm shift in our institutions, government, businesses, galleries, and an overhaul of the entire colonial framework of Turtle Island to amplify marginalized, unheard and underheard voices. In this context, when our team came together in March to create a vision for the AGNS, we had more questions than we did answers.

Through our conversations and introspection as a team, questions surfaced like: “How do we create space for every body and every mind?” “How do we honour the ancestors and these traditional lands and water?” and, ”Should we be
building an art gallery?” If our process has taught us anything, it is that innovation is born from collaboration. The solution demands a new relationship between leaders where ‘ours’ does not exist separately from ‘theirs’. It lies in the
realization that sometimes competing goals that arise from multiple voices are in fact the very opportunity for us to create a new way forward.

The result is Sea Change.