Crystal Kolt, now formerly the cultural coordinator for the Flin Flon Arts Council, has officially started her new job. Kolt is now the City of Flin Flon’s director of culture and community initiatives.
Kolt started her new post in mid-May and will be the City’s point person for cultural development, while still working with the arts council and with several other community organizations as a volunteer.
The new post will take the lessons Kolt has learned through years of hard work in promoting the arts and use it to potentially drive new ideas, including pushes toward economic development.
“With this particular position, the way I’m seeing it right now, it allows me to use a lot of my energy and contacts towards supporting and building Flin Flon as a cultural hub,” she said.
“In terms of our culture, I’m really wanting to do a deeper dive into our cultural communities - that could be the people on Main Street who help plant plants to new immigrants moving into town to supporting our arts and culture and recreation that has such a strong presence in our community.”
Kolt, originally a native of Winnipeg, graduated from the University of Manitoba’s school of music before moving to Flin Flon in the 1990s. Since then, Kolt, along with her husband Mark, has taken a front-row seat in the years-long resurgence of Flin Flon arts, leading the Arts Council in its modern guise for the past 15 years as its cultural coordinator. Kolt also organizes the annual Culture Days festival each fall, is the conductor for the Flin Flon Community Choir and is on the organizing committee for the Blueberry Jam Music Gathering. Kolt was also the lead organizer and orchestra conductor for last month’s Flin Flon Community Choir production of Mary Poppins and helped start the Uptown Emporium in 2021, a business run by the arts council that sells items made by local artisans that has since expanded to promote creators in other northern communities.
Under the umbrella of her new job, Kolt will still be working with some of those groups, but as a volunteer or board member.
“I’m still going to be involved in supporting the arts council for sure, on the board or as a volunteer, whatever capacity I can - my heart is still close to all of that,” she said.
“I’m really looking forward to knuckling down and doing whatever I can within my world and with the people I know to support the town.”
One thing Kolt wants to get going on is the creation of an official cultural policy from the City, something that has been discussed at recent events as a way to help promote a community’s culture to the outside world.
“One of the several practical things that we’ll start with that I’m working on is something called a cultural policy. When we had the northern art conference that happened the end of March, that was something that was mentioned by the Canada Council for the Arts that was really important,” Kolt said.
“There are a few municipalities across the country that have this. There’s a national organization called Creative Cities, which I’m hoping we will be part of. It’s really putting an understanding toward what the cultural sector can be, in terms of economic development. We’ve been doing it anyways.”
Kolt’s position is brand new, but she hopes she can produce something positive from the job.
“We’ll see what I can do. I love an adventure and this is yet another grand adventure that I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth into,” she said.
