Toronto Magazine - Premier 2008 - (Page 8) Poet Laureate’s Message Welcome to the creative city. Most cities recruit your imagination. Toronto releases it. Our city is a place of allowance, unshackled by the tyrannies of ideology, agendas and political caveat. It is where diversity takes on a new meaning, flying above the fanfare of multiculturalism. It is where the world gets along with itself — an atmosphere of civility engined by creativity, with all the amenities offered by a world-class city but with the advantage of trust. You can trust Toronto with the casual atmosphere of experimentation and possibility. And that’s what attracts the world to Toronto. You won’t find the wounded narrative of the past. People come here because the city is being authored every day by those with no time for historical failures. The story of Toronto is in the curiosity of its citizens eager to see what the global city of the future will look like. And Toronto is the city of the future, where sustainability meets civic grace, where livability means prosperity because creativity is our hallmark. We imagine ourselves. We are bonded by imagination. And that is the key to success in the global city. You want formal art? We have it. You want bohemia? We have it. You want neighbourhoods? We are famous for them. Go down the roster of delights and urban fantasy. We have the expected, but the unexpected? We leave that to the imagination of those who are imaginative. As ambassador for the arts and Curator for the Centre for Global Cities, I travel and lecture on global esthetic. And I regularly meet the pilgrims of glamour towns throughout the world who want to come to Toronto and live here. Why? Because the global citizen is hungry for something called “civic grace.” Other cities want to come here and see how it is done. We do what everyone else does, and better, but with the seduction of civic grace, which is something you can’t manufacture, brand into being or fund into existence. Civic grace is what all global cities want to learn how to do and the Toronto copyright to it is secure. So, let me welcome you to Toronto. If you fall in love with it, it will be because Toronto will have let you re-imagine yourself. It is major refreshment to a globalized world, and it is the gift of heart, the kind of heart the city of the future depends on. Pier Giorgio Di Cicco Former Poet Laureate of Toronto Curator, Humanitas Museum and Centre for Global Cities toronto | 2008 8
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