Weyburn celebrated culture and the arts with the Culture Days event held over the weekend of Sept. 27-29, at various venues around the city.
I want to say that this event went off without a hitch, and for the most part it did, but there were some problems encountered in the staging of the event that really shouldn't have happened.
I'm not going to detail what some of those difficulties were, because my intention is not to make people upset here, but to simply point something out: one of the participants in the event was frustrated with some of the things that were happening, and said to the effect, "everyone involved in Culture Days needs to be united, this should be promoted and presented as one group."
The person added that it was a matter of a need, for the arts and for culture to survive and proliferate in Weyburn the way it ought to. Instead, one had the distinct impression of one set of stuff going on at the T.C. Douglas Centre, and another set of stuff at the Leisure Centre and Curling Rink, and the two were never connected; the point is, they should've been.
The opening event at the Leisure Centre was really good, with a wide selection of artists presenting their works, and entertainment from the Comp STARS choir and by some others, like Gary Sidloski, Mason Charlton and Ben Sidloski. What was disappointing is that these works were not on display through the whole weekend, but just on Friday.
The First Nations events at the Douglas Centre were excellent, from the tipi-raising to the dancing, and the instructional sessions on the culture and traditions of First Nations people were really good.
There really should have been more people out to see it, but then the sessions held in the tipi were nicely small and intimate, so that worked well.
For future events, what would really help things is if there is cooperation between the groups involved, for starters, and secondly, it would be nice to see representation from the many cultures who now live here in Weyburn, in addition to the "original culture", the First Nations peoples.
The events I did see were worth the time to view and to listen and to understand. As I heard some people comment, who were also watching the First Nations events, it was about time that Weyburn paid attention to these stories and traditions. After all, Signal Hill itself got its name from its use by the First Nations people who lived on the Plains. There are tipi rings up there (some have been lost forever), so you know Weyburn was a significant stopping-off point for generations before we got here.
