There may never have been a better time for Yorkton residents to give serious thought to the importance of culture and its diversity to our community.
Recently the Yorkton Arts Council, Yorkton Film Festival and Free My Muse Theatre Company joined forces to make a presentation to Yorkton Council to have Sept. 30 – Oct. 2, be proclaimed Culture Days in the city.
“Founded in 2009, Culture Days is a non-profit organization dedicated to building a national network of cultural connections devoted to providing Canadians with opportunities to participate in, and appreciate, all forms of arts and culture,” details www.culturedays.ca. ”Through an annual three-day national celebration that always begins on the last Friday of September, hundreds of thousands of artists and cultural organizations in hundreds of cities and towns come together and invite Canadians to participate in free, interactive and “behind the scenes” activities to discover their cultural spirit and passion. Since its inception, 10 million Canadians have participated in 40,000 Culture Days activities and events in 900 cities and towns during the annual event.
“As a leading national voice for the active and engaged cultural life of all Canadians, Culture Days provides support, tools and resources to a wide variety of artists and cultural organizations to help them unite the country through engagement in culture.”
Having days to specifically mark the importance of culture is a good thing, but in reality culture permeates our everyday lives.
It is the art on the office walls.
It is the food we eat.
The music we listen to is often related to our cultural roots.
It is so much who we are as individuals and as a community.
And that is why this year’s Culture Days provides an opportunity. We are in the midst of a municipal election.
We are aware of the need to address infrastructure shortfalls, and to continue to address rain water run-off.
But a community needs its culture too, and Council can play its role in that too.
For example, an Arts Policy has been discussed by Councils of the past, but without some support dollars being tied to it, it was never more than feel good words on a document. Voters may want to ask the long list of candidates what they would to do enhance arts and culture in the city.
On a broader basis, it’s important to remember that as most of us arrived here from others countries through the generations we added to what it is to be Canadian.
We can’t lose sight of that even as radical fringe hate groups such as the Sons of Odin pop up in our province. The Klu Klux Klan have had their sheets hanging in closets in Saskatchewan in the past, and the SoO are just the next nest of haters to poke up through the mud.
The irony is the group’s racist views are wrapped in anti-immigrant rhetoric, which is so asinine given their forefathers had to be immigrants too.
And so again this Culture Days we need to celebrate our diversity and all it offers to reinforce just how much that diversity means to our city, province and country.
