What's On: St. Albert Culture Days!

It can be difficult to try something new.

While there’s a wide assortment of creative activities in St. Albert throughout the year, having an opportunity to dabble—especially without a financial commitment—can be tricky to find. Fortunately, St. Albert Culture Daysoffers a chance to do just that: Over two weekends, a wide range of arts and cultural activities are available to try with no cost to prohibit one’s curiosity.

“It provides an opportunity for kids and adults in the community to discover hobbies, or cultural-type things that they may not have considered,” explains Doug Campbell, president of the St. Albert Cultivates the Arts Society.

The 2024 Culture Days offerings include a mix of drop-in workshops and registration-required events, with almost everything happening around the city hall building. The events span visual arts, children’s theatre, photography, cooking, and creative writing, as well as Metis, Inuit, and African cultural activities. Even some not-inherently-cultural-but-still-particularly-useful sessions—like how to use a 3D printer!—will be offered. Everything is free of charge, by design.

“That's the key criteria,” Campbell says. “Everything has to be a free event. If there are costs involved with a presenter, those are covered by our organization. … We recognize that artists, presenters, performers, should be properly reimbursed for their time. It's just part of the way arts and culture should be presented to the community.”

It’ll also be a mix of new and returning sessions: Campbell notes that Culture Days tries to bring back the events that intrigued patrons in the past, in addition to seeking out the new opportunities for people to explore.

“Every year we take a look at what was offered in the previous year, and see what was popular,” he says. “We see what people want to do.”

Culture Days also stands as a showcase of what the residents of St. Albert are thinking, making, doing, and creating. And the wide range of activities at Culture Days reflects the growing multicultural and creative diversity of St. Albert itself.

“We're now at 72,000 residents, and we have become, to a degree, a more diverse community,” Campbell says. “I think Culture Days is important, in that people can stay within St. Albert and get an opportunity to experience different types of cultural activities put on by groups that are resident within our community. It also provides an opportunity, for those who want to take it, to broaden their scope of overall culture, and broaden their scope of exactly what is part of the cultural fabric that makes up St. Albert.”

Article Written by: Paul Blinov

St Albert Culture Days runs from September 21st to September 28th.  A full list of events, workshops, and registration links can be found at www.stalbertculture.ca.

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