Conference and Civic Centre

By Cheryl Jahn

Public Art

New mural for the Conference and Civic Centre

Feb 27, 2026 | 3:03 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – A little dab here, a bigger dab there, and a pair of iconic landscapes are taking shape in the Prince George Conference and Civic Centre. The creations of two local artists: Erin Stagg and Kim Hayhurst.

“I’m doing only my section. And then Kim provides the animals that live in the world,” says Stagg, Co-Artist on the project.

“She is putting down a lot of the the groundwork and the backdrop,” explains Kim Hayhurst, Co-Artist. “And then I’m coming in and adding, let’s say, that interest. I’m adding little details and little storytelling elements and a little whimsy.”

And picking these two pieces of Prince George lore – the cutbanks and Cottonwood Island Park – was really simple.

“It honestly wasn’t that hard of a choice because I walk here all the time. I see this all the time. I’ve been taking pictures of it all the time,” says Stagg. “I’ve seen it in every different iteration that it is in. And I think of it like my backyard. And I think a lot of people in Prince George think of Cottonwood like their backyard. A lot of people spend a lot of time here, and it’s very beloved to many of us.”

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The murals are massive, taking up two lengths of the walls inside the Conference and Civic Centre. For Erin, though, painting something this massive is actually very different than what she normally does.

“I actually found it a lot easier to work at this scale than I thought. But the thing that surprised me was that, after a day of painting an illustration for a book will take longer than painting all of this. And so at the end of the day, my my eyes, like my visual cortex part of my brain is exhausted. And I found that very interesting because that was like a new development.”

“Prince George has so much of it, but a lot of it is hidden,” says Hayhurst. “A lot of it is hidden in back alleys. And then art generally can be quite hidden in Prince George too, where it’s happening behind doors or it’s in an art gallery or something like that. And so it feels like you have to have permission to participate in art and you don’t. It’s accessible to everyone.”

The new mural will be in place for the next five years.