Plenty of informative and fun events are happening across the province for BC Culture Days. (File photo)
it's culture time

BC Culture Days gives Nanaimo’s history a digital life

Sep 24, 2022 | 5:27 AM

NANAIMO — B.C. Culture Days, which started on Sep. 23 and runs until Oct. 16., is being celebrated once again this year.

Described as Canada’s largest public participation campaign for the arts, it’s a time for people across the country to come together to celebrate arts, culture and heritage in their community.

In celebration of this almost three-week-long event, there are a number of free and affordable activities taking place province-wide.

Locally, the Nanaimo Museum admission will be by donation and will feature displays of rarely seen artifacts and photos from their collection. Halloween decorations will also be set up on Oct 4.

There is also digital tours exploring the history of Nanaimo’s harbour walkway, its postwar transformation, and early life in the Harbour City, where you can see what it was like for people living in Nanaimo from the 1850s to the 1920s.

Nanaimo is also lucky enough to be home to one of the 2022 Culture Day Ambassadors this year.

Rachelle (Shelley) Stein-Wotten is a comedy writer and freelance journalist based on Vancouver Island, according to her website.

She is a big advocate for ecological and social justice issues and uses humour to help confront reality, as well as to educate and engage people to consider truths about how we live and what that says about us.

Stein-Wotten helped create a short film “Words of an Ecosystem”, which will be released on Oct. 8th. More information on it can be found here.

Each year emerging artists are appointed as BC Culture Days ambassadors. These artists are given the opportunity to participate in a mentorship program with an established artist and contribute to a creative project aimed at enhancing community engagement.

You can find a full list of all the activities here at the Culture Days website.

The BC Arts Council also provided funding for this years Culture Days, including $30,000 through the Arts Impact Grant for Earth Endeavours led by the BC Culture Days ambassadors.

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