The Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC) is holding its 32nd annual Fine Arts Festival at the Prince Albert Exhibition Grounds this week.
This year there are a total of roughly 1350 students and chaperones from PAGC communities across the province.
“We have students here from Sturgeon Lake all the way to Fond du Lac, the La Ronge area, Grandmother’s Bay, Pelican Narrows, and various other communities,” stated Rhonda Middlemass, who is a teacher in La Ronge.
At the festival, students will showcase artwork, participate in dance competitions, and watch arts performances.
“We just wrapped up the grand entry, and then we’ll go into the Pow Wow exhibition and the different styles of Pow Wow dance, and then we’ll go into jigging, square dancing, country line dancing, and creative dancing, and then tomorrow is new, and we’ve got drama, oratory, vocal solos, and choirs—all sorts of fun stuff,” explained Fine Arts Festival coordinator Shona Tretiak.
The goal of the annual festival is to give youth the chance to showcase their talents and to share different cultures and stories between PAGC communities.
“There are many outcomes I like to see, and I saw it in the last couple of days. It’s just a range of children getting to know each other, just displaying what they have been performing in, the pride that you see shining on their faces,” explained Middlemass.
“It gives the youth something to reach for, and we’ve got Rebecca Strong coming tomorrow, our winner of Canada’s Got Talent, and just kind of talking about how important it is to have dreams and to just reach for them and keep on trying,” said Tretiak.
The annual festival kicked off on Monday and wraps up tomorrow.