It’s fair to say that this week’s edition of Yorkton This Week might be dedicated to the arts.
Look at some of the content: We have the Canada 150 mosaic, two upcoming concerts, two art gallery openings. Culture Days is coming up this weekend as well, so we are going to have more coverage next week too. There’s a lot of art happening in Yorkton this September and continuing into October.
The nice thing is it’s not just dedicated to one segment of the population. Take the Canada 150 mosaic, which quickly filled up with painters eager to make their own impression on the image, from elementary school students to people in their 90s.
Then again, there’s a lot of art happening in Yorkton all the time. You can see that when the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery – host of one of the gallery openings and the Canada 150 mosaic – does their annual local artists exhibition each May. Musically, you’ve got the Yorkton Arts Council’s Stars for Saskatchewan concert series throughout the winter months, but they are also doing concerts outside of that.
In fact, trying to highlight just how much art is going on in Yorkton at any given moment runs the risk of forgetting a multitude of different organizations and groups putting something on at any given point. What about all the dance, for example? What about the bands in the community? What about the theatre groups putting on plays? What about the groups encouraging writers and photographers? Even paint nights, raising money by getting people to paint an image, are an example of arts enriching the community. If one is going to mention everyone, you’re just going to fill the editorial space with a list of names and have no room for anything else.
That’s something to be proud of, especially in a smaller community. We have enough people doing something within the arts that you can’t hope to name them all, and they’re doing such a wide variety of things that everyone should be able to find something they can enjoy in the arts here in the city. Some people can participate, some people can just enjoy the works of others, some people like visual arts, others enjoy performance, and all of them have something they can do here at home, which is not a given and not something every community can boast about.
Yorkton should be proud of its arts community, and we should definitely take advantage of the different arts we have on offer.
