About the Innovation

Charlene Alexander is co-founder of the Great Northern Arts Festival, which first took place in 1989 at Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The Great Northern Arts Festival celebrates the diverse culture and art forms of the North and today is the premiere artistic and cultural event in Northern Canada. The Festival brings together over 80 artists and entertainers from all Northern Cultures: Inuvialiu; Gwich'In; Dene; Inuit; Athapaskan; Metis; and Non-Aboriginal.

The goal of the Festival is to provide a venue for artists to share information and techniques, to grow within their medium and to provide an environment that encourages experimentation with new media. The Great Northern Arts Festival provides Northern artists with an opportunity to meet one another. When Charlene, and her co-founder Sue Rose, started the Festival, artists throughout the Northwest Territories were desperately in need of a way of connecting to each other. Unlike urban artists, Northern artists often create in isolation, in small communities that can be hundreds and even thousands of miles apart. As well, some isolated communities lacked an art vocabulary, making it difficult for artists to talk about their work.

The Festival also gives artist a chance to see their work in a different context, on public exhibition. Before the festival, many of the artists considered themselves firstly as producers of products for sale as opposed to 'creative artists.'

Today, the Great Northern Arts Festival is held for ten days at the end of July at the Inuvik Community Recreation Centre.

About the Innovator

Charlene has made a major contribution to the bridging of communities, ideas and creative experiences in Canada's North.

Charlene Alexander can claim that she is both from the South and the North of Canada. Charlene was born in Southern Ontario but moved with her family to Inuvik where her father, who was in the Armed Forces was posted. Today, Charlene lives in Whitehorse, Yukon with her husband and two small children.

In 1989, when Charlene was working in a small gallery in Inuvik, she decided to exhibit the work of three artists from the islands. This exhibition was different from others held at the gallery in that Charlene brought the artists to the exhibition. At the time, isolated artists in the North rarely attended the exhibitions of their work since travel was costly. The Great Northern Arts Festival emerged out of this very humble beginning.

Charlene studied photography at Ryerson Polytechnical University in Toronto. As a creative person, her energies were channeled into establishing the Great Northern Arts Festival. Now that she is not as heavily involved with the Festival as she was in the past, she finds that she is "starting to feel the urge to photograph and paint again."

Founding the Festival has given her a sense of accomplishment and pride. The task was huge and the challenges were numerous. In the beginning, Charlene worked as a waitress to make ends meet. Now, the festival has come of age and receives much financial support, which provides salaries for organizers.

Charlene speaks with admiration of the far North, which she says is "a wonderful, very big place with a very tight community. People a 1,000 miles away are your neighbours."