By Dave Babbitt – Special to the Sydenham Current
Something very, very special happened at our monthly Arts Council Board meeting last Wednesday.
Since March of 2020, our Board of Directors have met as per our constitution with our monthly agenda largely consisting of important, yet dry topics such as our incorporation, governance issues, insurance issues, constitution and by-law reviews and revisions, Provincial changes to the Act governing how Not-For Profit organizations are to be run (ONCA), our monthly ukulele and Wallaceburg Concert Band reports repeatedly indicating that nothing has happened due to lockdowns and mandates, and our Treasurers’ monthly report that had us watching our meagre bank account slowly deplete to a very dangerous point.
In this column that Dan and I write, we’ve frequently lamented the fact that the Arts have been simply dead in the water for two years.
That is until now!
At our meeting last week, we decided that enough is enough.
On February 21 of this month, Provincial re-opening plans will allow for increased capacity limits to 100 percent in indoor public settings where proof of vaccination requirements are in effect including restaurants, bars and other food or drink establishments… and strip clubs.
I had to include the strip clubs because I think it’s funny and it’s about as far away from what we do as one could possibly think, but it’s in the regulations.
Perhaps some look at stripping as “Art” but I’ll leave that alone.
With the regulations about to change we decided to pounce.
Drum roll please…
In response to the “light at the end of the tunnel” the province has promised, (again) the Wallaceburg and District Council for the Arts will be presenting the ‘Celtic Hillbillies’ at the James Street Eatery on Sunday afternoon, February 27 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
This isn’t just news folks, it’s BIG news for both the Arts, you, and I.
The Celtic Hillbillies are a four-piece, good time group hailing from Sarnia.
If you search them up on their Facebook page, you will quickly discover that they have quite a following and are very in-demand.
The concert is being described as “An Old-Fashioned Celtic Kitchen Party.”
Now I’ve never been to an “Old Fashioned Celtic Kitchen Party” but if it’s anything like the East Coast one’s I’ve watched online, this is going to be an absolute hoot.
The groups’ repertoire is quite large and can feature many different genres, but it’s all tinged with that unmistakable Celtic flavour due to their instrumentation.
Led by Paul Maguire on guitar and banjo and vocals, the four-piece group includes Christine Storey on the fiddle and vocals, Steve Mullen on bass and vocals, and Millie Beskers on the cajon, percussion and vocals.
Tickets are on $20 each, the bar will be open, and the James Street Eatery will have a limited food menu available.
Ticket sales must be capped at 70 and while it’s cliché to say that tickets are selling fast, the truth is that almost one third of them were spoken for on the first day of sales.
In a previous column I had mentioned that several of our Wallaceburg Concert Band members attended the Chatham Concert Band Christmas concert at the Capitol Theatre back in mid-December.
In my opinion, the huge size of the crowd at that concert was indicative of the pent-up desire for people to get out and enjoy themselves and was truly a breath of fresh air.
Immediately after that concert, smaller crowd size limits returned.
Our Arts Council is hoping that the same pent-up desire for a return to concerts and other artistic endeavours is alive in Wallaceburg as well.
There are Arts Councils in many large centres around Ontario but ours in little old Wallaceburg, is the smallest of them all.
Most of the other Arts Councils have full-time paid staff that pursue large grants, are municipally supported, and have a huge base of supporters.
In our case, we have no municipal support, no millionaire benefactors, and what small amount of revenue we might bring in from one of our events is all that we have to provide seed money for our next endeavour.
But I’m not writing to cry poor.
I’m writing to say that “we’re excited to be back attempting to do something.”
We really want to grow our presence in Wallaceburg and area in the coming months and we need your help by supporting our endeavours.
Please consider supporting the Arts by grabbing a few friends and joining us for a Sunday afternoon of great music, refreshments, food and most importantly, helping us re-launch the Arts in Wallaceburg after two years of inactivity.
Tickets can be purchased by calling 519-627-1222.
