Since 2009, BC Culture Days has been coming together with a group of art ambassadors who present their own forms of art as they work with professional mentors to bring people together in creativity and fun. Since the pandemic had changed our abilities to be together in public, directors and ambassadors at BC Culture Days—which refers to itself as “Canada’s largest public participation campaign for the arts” on its site—have8 had to rearrange the event and have used their imaginations to bring it to people in an up-to-date format, whether it be through livestream presentations, pre-recorded videos, or socially distanced indoor and outdoor activities, all in order to keep the tradition of Culture Days alive while connecting people through whatever means possible.
One of Culture Days’ ambassadors is Laura Rechwan, who graduated from Camosun’s Visual Arts program in 2015; she says it’s important to be able to reach people inside their homes.
“Creativity is a way for people to connect across boundaries,” says Rechwan. “Not just societal boundaries like different age groups and such, but also in terms of physical boundaries; having to stay separate. I think this show will definitely help people to connect again and come out of this sense of isolation, because, thanks to digital means, we don’t have to be in the same room any more to be connecting and creating and sharing each other’s creativity.”
Rechwan believes that connection and crossing boundaries is one of the themes of the show, and that it could be a big part of leaving an isolated world and re-entering a social one.
“The theme of the show and the concept of the show is inviting artists from different disciplines, or pairing up artists of different mediums,” she says. “For instance, taking and pairing together a poet and a musician, that can help people come together and make connections. Not just through their work, but with the people themselves. All of our artwork or creative writing, any pieces that the artists create, they are all pieces of ourselves and are all beneficial for coming out of isolation and finding ways around isolation and that kind of thing. Before the pandemic, I was working in an art gallery as a manager, and I think the biggest negative I felt was a sense of isolation from that community because I was working every weekend and seeing hundreds of different artists coming in constantly, and it’s something that I really miss.”
Rechwan says the isolation and shutdowns that came with the pandemic influenced her own work.
“Certainly, the venues where I exhibited my work was reduced,” says Rechwan. “I shifted more towards commission and custom art—of people, of vehicles, of pets… But at the same time being at home and working apart, I was also able to start experimenting and working with processes I had never worked with before, or even felt like I had the time to try before.”
Rechwan also says the response to BC Culture Days has been positive, and that people have been eager to submit their work for the first round of submissions.
“All the works that are on the website right now, all the people I reached out to, that I invited, there were absolutely no rejections,” she says. “All of the people who participated in the first round were very happy to participate. For the second and third round I would actually love to see more submissions. Just getting the word out there has been one of our biggest challenges. It’s interesting because everyone who I have connected with and who has submitted has been very excited.”
Rechwan is hoping that the artwork presented on the website will inspire others to submit their own work. (The deadline for submission to have works in the launch has passed, but submissions to be in BC Culture Days will be open throughout the event.)
“In terms of the event, I am really just hoping that people will feel ignited by the works they see, and will want to create works in response,” she says. “I am really hoping that emerging artists, established artists, anyone at all who identifies as an artist… and I am also hoping that other creative people who may not be so comfortable with the title of ‘artist’ might be willing to submit their work as well. Kids, adults, seniors, I’m really inviting anyone to participate, whether it is artists, poets, musicians, anything like that. I am hoping to see a big cross-section of creativity.”
BC Culture Days
Various times, until Sunday, October 24
culturedays.ca/en/bc