Fiesta fun

Arts and culture are natural partners.

It only made sense to combine the two at the 40th anniversary Folklore Festival. On Friday, students from elementary schools across Thunder Bay descended on Fort William Gardens for Arts Fiesta, a celebration of music, dance and artistic expression.

Pam Cain, executive director of the Community Arts and Heritage Education project, said she’s not sure why it took so long to combine the two. Her festival is normally staged in February, but pushing it back to May just made sense, she said.

“We were happy this year to have a little discussion with the Multicultural Association and create a partnership where we brought Arts Fiesta to the Folklore Festival.”

For the past two months, professional artists have visited local classrooms, creating visual and performances arts pieces for students to share at the Fort William Gardens showcase.

“Today is the day they get to show off all their hard work with an hour’s worth of presentation and a visual art display that will actually be up all weekend.”

Michelle Lander, Folklore Festival co-ordinator, said it was an easy sell.

“Being our 40th anniversary, I thought it was fitting to add youth and a third day. It’s educational. Performance art, education art, I think it’s a great fit to match with culture,” Lander said, expecting more than 12,000 people to flow through the Gardens on Saturday and Sunday.

“It was an easy deal. We’ve been talking with Pam about adding education for awhile.”

Lander said it’s also a way to spread word about the Festival itself, which has seen a drop-off in volunteers.

Each student in attendance on Friday received passes to return to Folklore Festival over the weekend.

“We’ve actually lost a few booths because we haven’t had the young people. And we were thinking of ways to engage young people, not just for their 40 hours of community service ... So today is our first step and we hope we can continue it after today.”

For the students, it was just a lot of fun.

Tammy Camille, an 11-year-old Grade 6 student at St. Bernard School, took part in the first act Friday, and couldn’t wait to get on stage.

“We get to dance in front of everybody ,” she said.

What more could anyone ask?