They nearly doubled last year’s attendance figures, so the popularity of the Estevan Art Gallery’s (EAGM) Halloween Haunt can’t be denied.
“We were actually running out of the food supplied for this event, and dug into the gallery’s food supply to get us through,” said the gallery director/curator Amber Andersen on Monday morning.
“And we’re just completing the cleanup this morning,” she said.
“Last year, we had 178 people (children and adults) which we considered pretty darn good and this year it was 329. It was pretty busy around here right from the start at 5 p.m. to around 7 p.m., and then the crowd dwindled down a bit to the closing at 8 p.m.,” she said.
The Halloween theme was evident throughout the entire facility as youngsters took on some challenging crafts or played a couple of the games set up in the main gallery. They also had an opportunity to enjoy a continually running animated Halloween themed movie in the education room that was turned into a temporary theatre.
The admission was kept to a low $2 per head, which hopefully would cover the expenses for the event that was boosted by the donation of some food and beverage items by local restaurants and the local NDP Estevan Constituency committee donated gift cards which helped defer expenses.
“If we do end up making any profit on it, the money will be directed toward childrens’ programming,” said Andersen.
The Halloween Haunt began as an Estevan Chamber of Commerce organized event a number of years ago, and four years ago they took on the EAGM as a partner in the venture and Andersen said, since then, the gallery has pretty well taken it on as a community contribution, relieving the C of C of that particular event responsibility.
“This year was obviously the largest ever Haunt we’ve had,” said Andersen.
“We see it appealing to the younger kids now, but we have costume contests (winners not decided yet, since it is to be judged as an online feature based on photos taken at the gallery), games, crafts for all ages. We pretty well have it down to a science now, but we will definitely keep adding to it,” she said. The costume contest votes are being recorded on the EAGM’s Facebook page.
“We had a good turnout of volunteers too. We had six of them as a core group who handled a lot of traffic.
The next event for the gallery will be the first-ever Kentucky Derby horse race on Nov. 5 with $100 hobby horses being decorated and ready to ride and prizes for the top horse and jockey. The entry fee, Andersen said, not only gets you a hobby horse to enter, but also two admissions to the event, one for the jockey and the other for the dice-throwing trainer.
