McGrew Meets City Hall
User Story
Contributed by Alice Major & The Edmonton Poetry Festival
At the Edmonton Poetry Festival, we’re always doing our best to get poetry out and around the city. So we had this bright idea to stage a flash mob during an Edmonton’s City Council meeting. Of course, it had to be something of an inside job. The mayor and one of the councillors were in on the secret. So were the City Manager, Simon Farbrother and the City Chaplain, John Dowds, and the staff of the protocol office who helped us arrange the necessary cameras and microphones. Fortunately we have a council and administration that are very supportive of arts and arts festivals in Edmonton.
We also got poetry supporters to come, promising a surprise but not telling them what it would be. It was fun sitting in the front row, waiting to be called up as the next item on the agenda. I could see the councillors looking puzzled and asking each other, “What are all these people doing here?” There wasn’t anything controversial on the agenda to attract a lot of citizens. And then the poetry began….
