First of all, thank you to all of you who made our recent Kickstart arts event a success. A big thanks to my team, to our generous sponsors, to the wonderful artists who shared their work, to our Passport participants, our passport prize donors and to our guests who came to explore. I was delighted with the variety of arts that were represented – and I know that was only a taste of what we have here in Cochrane. We had paintings of course – oil, watercolour, acrylic and mixed media. Drawings too – pencil, pen, coloured pencil, etc. And then we had everything from photography to woodworking, felting to pottery, calligraphy to metal work, jewelry to wildlife carvings, quilting to bookbinding, stained glass to painted silk, assemblages to animation, sculptures to books by local authors, and music to theatre. Check out the website – www.CochraneArts.com – for images from the event. I think one of the artists I was most excited about was a 14-year-old girl named Sydney who is already doing some pretty amazing work. Thanks Sydney – it was a pleasure having you there. It’s great to see youth who have a strong passion for the arts and I know we want to work with more youth as we move forward. So now what? We have scheduled an Arts Community meeting for Oct. 29. This will be part social – so you get a chance to mix and mingle with others artists and creatives, and part a bit of a input session. I want to update the arts community with what we have in mind and get input and feedback for that. One of the comments I got several times from the artists at our Kickstart event was that they loved getting together with the other artists and would love to do more of that. We have some ideas for that, but are hoping you will also give us your thoughts on how best to do that. We’re starting to work on an arts festival for the spring. Thanks to the BowRiver’s Edge Campground Society, we now have a grant to help us put on that festival. Our first event was mostly a showcase to introduce the community of Cochrane to some of the variety of arts we have here. Going forward we want to focus on events that will get more of the community involved. Look for more details in the days to come. Meanwhile, we are starting to explore possibilities for further grants and funding. If any of you have suggestions for us, we would love to hear from you. ([email protected] or 403-510-9091). We are now heading into the Christmas season with all of the markets, shows and sales coming up. I’ve updated our Christmas Markets listings for 2018 – check them out at http://www.cochranearts.com/christmas-markets/. I’ve included website or Facebook links for those markets if you want to get further details, and for those of you who might want to check into selling at any of these events. Also - if you know of any other markets, please let me know – I would be happy to add them to the list. Here is another of those far-too-hidden resources we have here in Cochrane. I’ve just added a new webpage under the Resources menu link with a starting list of the arts related classes and workshops that are offered in Cochrane - www.cochranearts.com/art-classes-workshops/. If you’re aware of any others, please let me know.
