With less than a month to go before the 2024 edition of Culture Days, plans are well in the works to bring new ideas and old favourites to town.
This year’s Culture Days will take place as a series of events from Sept. 20-Oct. 13, with different activities going on throughout the month, usually on weekends.
“Culture Days planning is already starting, in full swing and moving forward,” said Crystal Kolt, the City of Flin Flon’s director of culture and community initiatives and a long-time Culture Days organizer.
“We’re excited. Everybody loves Culture Days.”
This year’s Culture Days celebration will include a visit from Manitoba Lieutenant Governor Anita Neville, who will come up from Winnipeg to attend part of the celebration, said Kolt. Another visit will be paid by someone with previous ties to Flin Flon’s musical community - Brad McDougall, a Regina-based playwright, actor and director who, along with working in London’s famed West End and travelling theatre, helped co-direct the musical Follies with the Flin Flon Community Choir in the mid-2000s. McDougall will be both speaking with local students about the stage and performing his one-man production Night Sweats Oct. 13.
Aside from the visits, this year’s Culture Days will still include old favourite events, such as the Wild Things Market, which will be held in Creekside Park Sept. 21 and 22. Along with the market will be the Wild Things pumpkin patch, including kids’ activities and a special story time with an as-of-yet-unannounced guest reader.
The Walk Through a Volcano geology tour will take place in North Avenue Park Sept. 22, while the Human Books event is still tentatively planned to take place, this time at the former Hudbay staff house on Church Street Sept. 26 instead of at the Flin Flon Public Library. The Wild Rice Cabaret, one of the biggest annual performances with Culture Days, will take place Oct. 12 at the Flin Flon Community Hall - Pictures at an Exhibition, featuring the music and improvisation of Mark Kolt and several NorVA Centre art pieces, will take place at the centre’s gallery at a to-be-determined date. The Flin Flon Bombers will get into the act too, hosting a bunk hockey game at the Creekside bunk Sept. 29.
New events will include the Culture Cool Kids Hub at the Rotary Wheel Sept. 24, organized by the arts council and the Flin Flon Aboriginal Friendship Centre. The Central Canada Film Group and arts council will organize film screenings at Hapnot Collegiate’s Dorothy Ash Theatre.
The North Star Quilt Guild will organize two days of quilting activity out of their main base at the Northminster Memorial United Church Oct. 4-5.
“There are quite a few things that are in the planning stages right now,” said Kolt.
Kolt said that the community’s participation is what makes the annual fall festival important.
“What has made Culture Days Flin Flon the talk of the country is our philosophy is everyone has something they love, whether it’s hockey - which is why we feel like hockey is an important part of our culture - whether it’s drawing or theatre or spoken word, writing, whatever it may be,” she said.
“There are so many things that people love and are experts in, in our community. We want to be able to help get the word out that we’re here to celebrate that.”
Kolt also said one thing organizers are looking at for this year’s Culture Days is to show off their own passions from their homes - hanging up something they hold dear or have made themselves, whether it’s a painting, a quilt, a piece of equipment or whatever in their front window, to show their passions for passers-by.
“That would be really fun, if we could head toward that and just do it - be proud about the things we love and it would be fun to see in people’s windows.”
More information will be confirmed and released as Culture Days approaches.
