Festival looking for fresh ideas

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Published on Friday, May 27, 2016

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Neepawa & District Fine Arts Festival

Neepawa and District Fine Arts Festival provides an opportunity for young people in our community to showcase talents and develop musical, artistic and life skills by preparing for performance. For the last 50 years, the festival has brought the community together to celebrate our young people’s achievements in the arts.

The Fine Arts Festival desperately needs new board members and fresh ideas in order to continue. The president of the festival, Carolyn Durston, is stepping down this year. The board has functioned with a skeleton crew for the last five years. We currently have a treasurer, a secretary, an advertising chair, a trophies and awards chair and a program chair.  To function effectively, the festival needs a president, a piano chairperson, a vocal chairperson, an entries chair, an adjudicator chair and a piano coordinator to attend to the piano owned by the festival. During the actual festival, we also need a volunteer coordinator, to find people to manage secretarial duties, set up and take down. Carolyn has had to take on many of these jobs, as board members have retired from the board and new volunteers have not stepped up to take on the work. The five remaining board members are willing to stay on for another year and possibly more to help mentor and guide new members. Some of the jobs are smaller, some are bigger, but the work still needs to be done. 

There are approximately six meetings a year and the festival itself. Meetings are run on Sunday evenings so it doesn’t interfere with weekday activities. The meetings run for one and a half hours. 

The festival will not be able to continue if it does not have at least five to eight new members joining it. Please consider joining the board and encourage others to join so the festival can continue in our area. 

We are meeting on Sunday, June 12 at 7:00 pm at the Chicken Corral to discuss how to move forward with the Fine Arts Festival in Neepawa. Please join us!