Lindsay Bueckert is a local artist and filmmaker, astrophotographer, and quiet virtuoso. When she was 19 she moved to Little Italy from Saskatchewan and kept her connection to the Boyle Street and McCauley neighbourhoods playing music professionally and jamming with friends all around the area. She has played on the Heart of the City stage, and at this year’s jam and she captured the spirit of HOTC on camera. 

“I like to call those types of gigs ‘fun patrol,’ because I’m basically going around finding people having fun, capturing them on camera and then giving the vibe of the festival,” she says. These moments edited together tell a story of how the festival creates community and a sense of belonging. 

Bueckert’s films are mostly music related and she strives to let the subject speak for itself. “I’m always trying to look into things and try to find what the subject is,” she says about her work. “I don’t want to force the subject into any kind of box. I want them to show me who they are.” 

In 2020, when COVID-19 forced the cancellation of gigs, Bueckert started experimenting with film. “I bought a camera, started making some small music videos with some friends of mine, and then I eventually decided to go to NAIT.”

One of Bueckert’s assignments at NAIT was to make a documentary film. Her subject was Wayne Jackson, an accomplished singer-songwriter and nêhiyaw language speaker and teacher. “I had a month to figure out who this guy was. But we were also in [the] studio; it was a studio documentary because he hired me to be his session player for [a] full Cree language album.” The short film, The Making of Where the Elders Dwelt, captures Jackson and his devotion to uplifting the profile of the Cree language.

When Bueckert plays music she doesn’t like to pigeonhole herself. “I play a bit of everything. I play a lot of country, I like to play funk and soul, but I love folk music. I played in punk bands when I was younger.” She has played too many shows to count at The Aviary, a music venue right next to McCauley, and still gigs around Edmonton with her bass guitar. 

Her music career started as a child with the flute and eventually her parents bought her a guitar. When she moved to Edmonton she started playing basement shows with other musicians. “Eventually we got to a point in the band where there were five guitar players and nobody played bass. I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll buy a bass.’ So I just bought a bass and that’s how I started playing.”

Bueckert won’t wax poetic about her work. She keeps it simple: “I like to make art. My whole goal in life is just to make art.” She is currently experimenting with astrophotography. “We’ve taken pictures of galaxies and some nebulas. Weird stars, stuff like that. There’s one we got a couple of years ago, the Fireworks Galaxy. That was really neat. One of the best ones we got.”

Bueckert continues to play music while filming, editing, writing, and producing. “It’s coming out of a few hard years; COVID’s made it hard for everyone. To keep going, we need to keep doing it and not lose these traditions.”

Rachael Roberts is a board member with the Heart of the City Festival and Boyle McCauley News. She is a mother, a teacher, and a lifelong Edmontonian who loves this community.