Committee seeking members and volunteers to bring back festival this summer
The Fort Frances Museum is working on bringing back ‘Culturama,’ a previously successful festival of cultures and ethnicities hosted in Fort Frances for many years.
Culturama dates back to 1980. The festival was held annually over a weekend, usually at the ‘52 Canadians arena, until the Ice For Kids arena was built. The event went on hiatus from 1996 to 2000, but was revived for three more years, until the last event in 2003.
Now Fort Frances Museum Curator Kayleigh Speirs and local resident Kelly McGee, whom Speirs got to know through a contract position with the Fort Frances Library Technology Centre, are hoping to revive the event.
For those unfamiliar with the festival, it saw individuals and groups from different cultures and ethnicities come together to share food, ceremony and other cultural practices like dance or other art forms.
In past years, organizers have also brought in different cultural acts, like Irish dancers or Chinese lion dancers, to perform at the event as well.
Part of the reason the event died off was due to the strain on volunteers and a lack of funds. Speirs and McGee are hopeful that the long break will bring some new enthusiasm for the event and they are hopeful a provincial grant will help to defray costs.
“As soon as Kelly and I started reaching out to people we got very enthusiastic replies,” Speirs said. “Everybody was on board.”
They have started putting together a steering committee that has seen involvement from the United Native Friendship Centre, Rainy River Future Development Corporation, and the Fort Frances Chamber of Commerce. Anybody interested in being part of the committee can contact the museum if they’d like to be involved.
“We’ve submitted a grant application for some funding,” Speirs added. “So hopefully that will be successful and then we’ll have some funding to support bringing in performers and paying artists to take part.”
They hope to keep the event similar in style to Culturamas of days gone by.
“We’re planning to keep the original model,” McGee said. “Community groups will have booths, so we need people in the community to be those groups or individuals to organize booths that represent their ethnic background or cultural background.”
Speirs says she knows there are a variety of different cultures and backgrounds in the area and hopes that by enlisting the help of local Indigenous organizations, they can bring many people on board.
“We wanted right from the get-go to work with UNFC and some other Indigenous organizations like Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung (Manitou Mounds),” Speirs said. “Some of their employees are going to be on the steering committee. When we do start talking more about planning, we hopefully will see some cultural groups come forward. At the peak of Culturama, they would have like 20 different cultures represented.”
“They were largely Eastern European,” McGee added. “We’re hoping that maybe some of those folks are still in the area, or their descendants are carrying on traditions.”
As of right now, the event has been tentatively scheduled for Aug. 5-7, 2022. They hope to be able to hold the event primarily outdoors, anticipating that some COVID-19 restrictions could still be in place.
“We’re focusing a lot on outdoor venues,” Speirs said. “So definitely using Rainy Lake Square. We’re hoping to potentially have stuff set up at the marina, and we’ve toyed with the idea of maybe having some of Scott St. roped off so people can just walk around.”
Anyone interested in getting involved with the organizing committee, having a booth or their culture represented at Culturama 2022 can contact Speirs at the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre. She can be reached by email at ffmuseum@fortfrances.ca, by phone at (807) 274-7891, or by stopping in at the museum on Scott Street.
