Neepawa and District Fine Arts Festival celebrates half a century

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Published on Thursday, April 7, 2016

By Kira Paterson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

May 27, 1966 saw the first day of the first ever Neepawa Fine Arts Festival. Now known as the Neepawa and District Fine Arts Festival, the event will be celebrating its 50th anniversary from April 10 to 13. 

The festival, which today only features pianists and singers, originally included sessions in music, speech arts and dancing. It is an opportunity for artists to perform or showcase their talents and to learn from experts in their art. There are adjudicators for each art form, evaluating the participants and giving them feedback on what they did well and how they can do even better. 

“The biggest thing for me is how beneficial it is for the students who take part, the children who participate and who get the experience of being in that kind of a situation where they perform and someone speaks to them about their performance,” said festival committee president, Carolyn Durston, “Because, as a teacher, I’ve seen so much personal growth in my students who do that and stick with it.”

The inaugural festival saw 330 entries and about 600 people coming to watch. For a number of years, it continued to grow, with sessions including band, visual arts, spoken poetry, speech choirs and dance, as well as the piano and vocal categories that it still offers. At its peak, the festival took over 300 volunteers to run and in 1992, they had over 500 talent entries. Back then, the festival ran for 10 days, rather than the four days it currently spans.

After 1992, entries and volunteers slowly started to decline year by year, until, in 2004, they had to take a year off because they couldn’t get enough volunteers to run it and there were too few entries. That year, they reconfigured the festival to only include the classes that had the most entries, which were vocal and piano classes. “One of the things that has really helped the festival is that it’s so malleable. We can change it to fit what the community needs... That’s why it’s lasted so long, because it can adapt,” said Durston. Since the changes in 2004, they require fewer volunteers, less time and are able to have everything at the Knox Presbyterian Church. 

The Knox Presbyterian Church is one of the venues that has been used since the very first festival and the grand piano there was purchased with funds raised from the festival in 1997. “And it’s got the best acoustics I’ve ever heard. It’s a great place to sing or play,” Durston added.

This year, they have 171 entries, which is up by 23 from last year. Over the last 10 years, they’ve had an average of 123 entries, so the turnout this year is very good. The area that the festival draws from includes the communities of Brookdale, Arden, Eden, Franklin, Bethany, Birnie, Riding Mountain and Neepawa. This year, they also have a few farther out entries from Dauphin, Gladstone and Winnipeg, as the festival is open to all of Manitoba. 

Durston said that the high entry numbers are in part due to the fact that it’s the 50th anniversary. There have been some special sessions promoted this year in celebration of the milestone, which has generated some more interest. 

One of the special sessions this year is multi-generational piano duets. It’s a little bit different from the regular sessions, in that it’s non-competitive. “It’s a good way to encourage young kids to get started in the festival if they have somebody up there beside them when they’re starting out,” Durston said. She added that this session was more for fun than competition, meant to help participants with personal development. 

“The reason that we decided to promote duets was because the first publication that Mr. [Remi] Bouchard ever had was a piano duet that he wrote for the festival,” she explained. For those who might not know, Remi Bouchard is a published composer, pianist and piano teacher, who lives in Neepawa. 

The festival also has a special session highlighting Canadian composers and one highlighting Bouchard’s work specifically. These sessions will be taking place on Sunday, the first evening of the festival. There will also be a special vocal concert on Tuesday evening. 

The regular vocal and piano sessions will be on as usual, with awards and scholarships donated by local organizations to be won by the best performer in each level category. The adjudicators this year, who will be judging and working with the participants, are Arlene Baschak of Winnipeg, who will be adjudicating for the piano sessions, and Sheila Ardies of Steinbach, who will adjudicate for the vocal sessions. 

Community members can support the festival in a number of ways. They can attend any or all of the days it runs, donate to the festival, volunteer to help out during the event in the future or volunteer to become part of the organizing committee. 

Right now up until the end of the festival, the committee is running their “Friends of the Festival” campaign. Anyone who donates $25 or more is considered a friend and doesn’t have to pay admission to the festival and they will be given a tax receipt for their donation. Donations can be mailed to NDFAF, Box 546, Neepawa MB, R0J 1H0, brought in to the Viscount Cultural Centre or can be made at the festival itself. 

As for volunteers, Durston said that they are always taking volunteers who want to be part of the festival committee and anyone interested in helping out next year can talk to her or anyone currently on the committee. “I really hope that there are people in the community who would want to help have it carry on,” she said. “I have to feel that something that has lasted as long as it has in the community must be important to the community.”