cktimes.ca Archives for Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
A Chatham-Kent Arts Festival – A Brainstorming Session
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Do you mind if we sort of think out loud this week? We need to do some brainstorming on an idea that we have had kicking around in our minds for the last five years or so. We like the basic concept of a municipality-wide arts festival but there are a number of things that we need to clarify in our own minds and maybe if we share some of them with you that will help. We also hope that this discussion will inspire some thoughts from you as well.First of all, what would this arts festival include? Well, anything that has any kind of connection with arts, heritage or culture in Chatham-Kent. That would include visual arts, music and singing of all types, dramatic presentations of all sorts, film festivals, dance presentations, house tours, ethnic food festival, books and authors, craft shows, gardening, storytelling, automobile shows, historical re-enactments, multi-cultural presentations etc. etc. The imagination and ingenuity of the people of Chatham-Kent would only limit the limits of what could be included!
How long would it last? Well.... it might start out, for the first year, as simply a one or two weekend festival and then gradually expand so that it could become a three to four week festival with a whole range of activities going on each day, and each night, during that three to four week time span.
Our concept is that one could attend, for example, a film festival in Wallaceburg on Monday night, a jazz cafe in Ridgetown on Tuesday night, a juried art exhibition in Blenheim on Wednesday afternoon, a children's theatre presentation in Chatham on Wednesday evening, a giant garage sale on Hwy #2 from Thamesville to Tilbury all day Thursday, a high school drama festival at the Chatham Cultural Centre, a re-enactment on Friday at the Tecumseh monument, a storytelling session at Buxton, a gardening tour all day Friday throughout Chatham-Kent, a Michelle Wright concert on Saturday at the Capitol Theatre, a session of book readings by various writers at the Bruner Centre in Thamesville on Sunday,, a night of Celtic music in Wallaceburg on Sunday night, daily noon hour organ recitals at every church in Chatham-Kent and.... well....you get the idea!
Now, of course, the preceding ideas are just some very random thoughts off the top of our heads and, as you can imagine, the possibilities are limitless. We are sure that every one reading this article could come up with at least five ideas that we have not even considered here.
A key part of this kind of festival would, of course, be the marketing of the event. However, if ALL of Chatham-Kent got behind this idea, just imagine the kind of massive publicity campaign that could be staged. It would be phenomenal! Since every community would have a stake in this arts festival there would be, for maybe the first time, a very real and genuine reason to work together without any form of jealousy or divided interests.
When you bought a ticket (and we suppose that there would have to be a variety of specially designed tickets sold) it would be created so that individual tickets were designed to include events throughout the municipality on a variety of days and nights. In this manner, people would be encouraged to visit all parts of the municipality.
Would it be possible to put a Chatham-Kent Arts Festival in place in, let's say five years or less? Certainly! In fact, we think it could be done in two to three years but it would require some essential ingredients. First of all, the municipality would have to be on side and willing to put some initial monies into the project. For example, a Chatham-Kent Arts Festival would need; at least, one full time employee totally devoted to this project alone. The basic co-ordination of all the groups involved in such a project give us a headache just thinking about it!
Secondly, local businesses, industries, service clubs, schools, seniors and current arts groups would have to be sold on the idea and get on board in one way or another. It may not only be from a financial point of view that they get involved. Advertising, promotional activities as well as excessive manpower would be required to provide all the needs of an arts festival of this magnitude.
There's no question that we have the raw talent to stage a really fantastic arts festival that could easily rival anything put on by any other group in any part of Canada or the United States and such an event would have the power, we feel, to really unite all of Chatham Kent in a way that has not been possible before. Do we, as a municipality, have the will to organize such an event? Well, our gut reaction to that question is a rather tentative "yes". We don't really know and, of course, we won't really know until you let us know.
Remember we started this column by stating that we were only brainstorming with you and we hoped that you would respond with your thoughts and ideas. Not only your ideas of what could be put into this festival but also if you, personally, think that such an idea could work and do we, as a municipality, really want this to happen.
Please let us know! E-mail us at HYPERLINK mailto: jgilbert@ciaccess.com jgilbert@ciaccess.com or, better yet, make sure that you attend the next Arts, Heritage and Culture Task Force Meeting on OCTOBER 30th at 7:30 P.M. in the auditorium at Chatham Collegiate Institute. This group is attempting to put into place the recommendations from the recently created Chatham-Kent Strategic Plan.
Get involved and have a voice! We can change things, make new things happen and make our municipality a great place to live IF we get involved and work together.
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
