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Unique Orillia Culture Days event will be livestreamed Saturday

If you are missing your arts and culture friends and fun, please tune in to this amazing day of information and entertainment, urges arts columnist
The Sawbones Society credit Coldwater Steampunk Festival
The Sawbones Society will be featured Saturday as part of the Orillia District Arts Council's virtual Culture Days event.

This weekend, the big news is the Orillia District Arts Council’s (ODAC) Culture Days event on Saturday.

Due to rising numbers, ODAC has been constantly doing the “pandemic pivot” with this event, and have now landed on a completely online livestream event, produced at and by Creative Nomad Studios.

There will be live performances and chats, storytelling, how-to workshops, videos, and an online gallery. Participants in the day include the Sawbones Society, Mariposa Arts Theatre, Storytelling Orillia, the Orillia Fine Arts Association, Exton Productions Inc., Jakob Pearce, Aiden Gaebel, Greyson Martyn, Angie Nussey and Michael Martyn.

The day of livestreaming is free to watch, and is being featured on the national Culture Day’s website, as Orillia has been chosen as one of the Day in the Life featured communities by Culture Days here.

This will also be an opportunity to have a peek at Creative Nomad Studios’ newly renovated space. Rumour has it that it is just about completed, so enjoy this opportunity to take a look around and see what this wonderful space looks like. A far cry from the old Biway that used to be housed there.

If you are missing your arts and culture friends and fun, please tune in to this amazing day of information and entertainment. Well done ODAC and Creative Nomad, and all of the participants. This is a huge undertaking! The day can be viewed, starting at 10 a.m. Sat. Oct. 24 here. Enjoy!

Mariposa Folk Festival (MFF) has also done the pandemic pivot towards online offerings. In their case, its an online series on different musicians, with unique and sometimes never-before-seen footage of some of our Mariposa faves, past and present. Last week, MFF presented Joni Mitchell, and Buffi Sainte-Marie will be coming in November. Check out Joni Mitchell on the MFF website, here.

Travel by Sound is another online endeavour that is fun to watch. Hosted and created by violinist Victoria Yeh, Travel by Sound is an online virtual concert and adventure series which will run all winter long. It features communities of Bruce/Grey/Simcoe alongside over 20 different musicians and bands.

Episode 2 actually featured our own O-Town, a show at the Orillia Opera House, and a float plane ride over our area. For more information on this fun series, and to buy tickets, check out the website here.

All of our regular fundraising auctions are going online, and there are some new ones to add to the mix. The annual Kiwanis Auction, one of the biggest in our area, is online starting in early November, so we will have more on that later.

An online fundraising auction for Camp Couchiching is happening right now, until the end of October, and you can view and bid on items here. Summer camps have been hit hard by the pandemic, and have not been offered a lot of help, so feel free to help yourselves to awesome items and help camp as well!

Another online auction, which is ongoing, is the Orillia Museum of Art and History’s Art Auction. Twenty new items go up for bid every two weeks, and there are lots of lovely pieces to choose from, check them all out and bid here.

Do you have lots of gently used art supplies you are looking to re-home? Locals Meg Leslie and Emily DiLecce thought you might, and are looking for your donations of art supplies to donate to the Orillia Lighthouse Women’s Shelter. You can drop off your art supplies to 13 Creighton St. S. and help local homeless women have a creative outlet. Click here for more information.

The Orillia Centre for Arts and Culture has been a bit quiet during the pandemic, but has recently announced that it has a new creative director: Kate Hilliard. From Kate's bio: “Kate has cultivated a teaching practice at several institutions, including The Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City. Kate has instructed at Ryerson University since 2015 and is dedicated to nurturing students in their creative work. After performing Tino Sehgal’s work in several international galleries, Hilliard broke from dance practice to pursue curatorial work with a focus in contemporary performance and visual art.”

Rumour has it OCAC is working on its fifth iteration of Gathering, a First Nation’s Literary Festival, to be held in the spring. More news here when it comes available.

Trunk or Treat will be happening on Hallowe’en afternoon from 1 to 4 p.m. at ODAS Park. This will be a safe and fun way for your littles to celebrate Hallowe’en during this pandemic fall. For more information, click here.

Congratulations to The Shadowbox on its 39th anniversary! The Shadowbox has been a cornerstone of the arts district since before there was an arts district, and a cornerstone of the McGarvey family as well. Congratulations to Lucia, staff, and family on this amazing milestone.

Jamie Drake is playing at Fionn MacCool’s on Friday, Oct. 23 at 8 p.m.

Wear your mask and stay safe!

If you have arts news, send it to [email protected] by Tuesday at noon to be included.


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