Culture Days Celebrates 15 Years of Arts and Culture in B.C.

BC Culture Days is celebrating its 15th anniversary with hundreds of free and Pay-What-You-May arts and culture events across B.C. from Sept. 20 to Oct. 13, 2024. Open to all ages, abilities, and backgrounds, this year's events offer something for everyone. Participants can choose their own adventure by exploring a wide array of activities on the Culture Days website using new, easy-to-use tools to browse and RSVP for local events, set reminders, and bookmark favourites. Community organizers interested in hosting their own events can register for activities until Sept. 19. Discover free, hands-on arts and culture activities at culturedays.ca/bc and stay updated by following @BCCultureDays on social media.

Over the 15 years of Culture Days in B.C., 3 million people have attended the 8,749 events brought to life by nearly 2,000 passionate organizers in more than 330 vibrant communities across the province.

“Intercultural celebration, cross-cultural understanding, and collaboration are at the heart of BC Culture Days' 15th anniversary,” says Nazanin Shoja, BC Culture Days Program Director. "This year's theme of interculturalism is all about celebrating and honouring the connections between diverse people, groups, and cultures. Through our events' offerings of creative experiences, we hope to foster a sense of community and appreciation of our cultural intersections.”

Culture Days encourages millions across the country to share how arts, culture, and creative expression enrich and define their life and community. Over three weeks, the public can immerse themselves in local creativity and cultural diversity through inclusive, low-barrier events. Event-goers can expect everything from Taiwanese Yuanji dancing, urban sketching art walks, literary festivals, backstage theatre tours, Indigenous visual art exhibitions, and book launches to workshops in African electronic music with Afrorack, creative immersion dance with Ballet BC, and printmaking with visual storyteller Marlene Yuen.

The 2024 BC Culture Days Ambassador Event Series, Intercultural Interplay, will invite the public to ponder creative commonalities that exist among various cultures. Through creative sharing, participants will discover and embrace cultural differences, shared experiences, and individual as well as collective histories.

“Through my Culture Days scrapbooking event, I invite people to explore and document the principles that ground their cultures," says Jesse Medrano-Ramos, BC Culture Days Ambassador in Vancouver. “I hope for participants to uncover the deeper meanings behind their cultural identities and the ways in which these identities are interwoven with those of the broader community.” 

Each year, BC Culture Days appoints emerging artists from communities across the province as ambassadors for arts and culture in their locales. Alongside pursuing mentorships with established Canadian artists, the ambassadors develop events for Culture Days. Through this year's ambassador events, the six BC Culture Days artist ambassadors will guide local community members in Vancouver, Surrey, Victoria, Kelowna, and Nanaimo on interactive and playful paths to explore cento poetry, graphic score workshopping, paint making tutorials, collaborative artmaking, urban sketching, journaling activities, and more.

Introducing the 2024 Ambassadors of BC Culture Days and their events:

Annabelle Bail (Nanaimo) - Queer, non-binary artist Annabelle Bail encourages people to create art as a way of learning how to be more empathetic towards others, regardless of how they identify. Her Culture Days project aims to bring together strangers and have them form new connections by collaborating on a community mural. All are invited to contribute to Annabelle's Community Mural: Celebrating Culture and Diversity Through Art on Sept. 22 from 11:00am–4:00pm at the Nanaimo Art Gallery.

Shauna Kay (Kelowna and Armstrong) - Shauna Kay recognizes that balancing art with daily responsibilities is hard. She first turned to urban sketching as a quick, accessible way to keep her passion for creativity alive. Her creative walking tour in Kelowna will show participants that art doesn't have to be complicated—all you really need is an interesting subject, a sheet of paper, and a pencil. Learn about the stories and historical significance behind specific art installations in Kelowna's cultural district and gain sketching how-tos at her Sculpture Culture Sketch Tour on Sept. 22 from 9:00am–5:00pm. Judy Woo (Victoria) - Poet and multidisciplinary artist Judy Woo is an active advocate for Queer, disabled, and BIPOC artists in Victoria through her work with the arts collective Meltshot Brownie. For Culture Days, Judy is offering up a safe and inclusive poetry workshop where participants of various levels can explore facets of their identity by creating multilingual, collage-style cento poems. At the end of Judy's Patchwork Poetry - Poetry for Your Ancestors workshop, there will be an opportunity for participants to share their work, open-mic style in the language of their choice. The workshop will take place on Oct. 5 from 12:30pm–3:30pm at the Bayanihan/ Filipino Community Centre. Participants are asked to register here before Sept. 18.

Harmeet Kaur Virdee (Surrey) - Jazz musician and double bassist Harmeet Kaur Virdee wants to make music accessible by showing community members in Surrey that they can all create music, regardless of whether or not they have formal training. Using visual art and creative composition methods, participants of all ages at Harmeet's Everyone is a Composer workshop on Oct. 6 from 12:30pm–1:45pm at the Clayton Community Centre will not only create their own graphic score, but see it come to life through performances by PALS Quartet—featuring Harmeet and Metro Vancouver-based musicians Noah Franche-Nolan, Ru Ha, and Karl DeJong. Register here by Oct. 4 to attend the workshop.

Jesse Medrano-Ramos (Vancouver) - In their work, Filipino artist, space-maker, and facilitator Jesse Medrano-Ramos draws from the Filipino act of Talambuhay, to “tell one's story” to foster solidarity. Jesse's workshop, Cultures of Care: Scrapbooking Shared Stories, at UBC on Oct. 11 from 6:30pm–9:30pm will explore the power of journaling. Participants will scrapbook and journal to document, explore, and share their personal journeys, cultural histories, and experiences of identity. Art supplies will be provided, but attendees are encouraged to bring scrapbooking materials such as personal photos, poetry, past writing, cultural items, and so on.

Mackenzie Perras (Kelowna) - Contemporary painter Mackenzie Perras is intrigued by materials used to create art and the social and ecological histories behind them. Join Mackenzie for a day of storytelling, paint making, and creation at the Rotary Centre For Arts on Oct. 12 from 1:30pm–4:30pm. Participants of Colours from Earth: Collaborative Painting with Natural Paints will make paints from natural materials sourced from the Okanagan. Together, everyone will also create a large-scale piece of collaborative artwork to celebrate local, natural resources and the artists and creators from different cultural backgrounds that steward them.

For full artist biographies, visit: https://culturedays.ca/en/bc/2024-ambassadors

To learn more about the Intercultural Interplay Ambassador Series and how to get involved, visit here.

Culture Days raises awareness, accessibility, and participation in arts and culture across Canada. Organizations and artists in B.C. are encouraged to register their free, interactive events for Sept. 20 to Oct. 13, 2024 on the Culture Days website. Anyone—from grassroots community volunteers, public libraries, and independent artists, to major arts, culture, and heritage institutions, specialty festivals, and municipalities—can register Culture Days events as long as the events are participatory and free or Pay-What-You-May to attend. Event registration is open until Sept. 19, 2024 at 8:59 p.m. PT. 

For more information on how to take part in BC Culture Days, sign up for the BC Culture Days newsletter or visit culturedays.ca/bc.

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