The annual Tapestrama Cultural Festival returned to the Carlton Comprehensive High School Cafetorium on Saturday and Sunday.
The event has celebrated food, dance, and song from various cultures and customs every year for more than 40 years. Prince Albert Multicultural Council executive director Michelle Hassler said they had a great crowd for the two-day event.
“We’re very thankful for the support of the community, but we are also still want to invite people to come and witness Tapestrama annually as we organize it and we celebrate it,” Hassler said.
“It is very important to have a cultural festival such as this because, first and foremost, Prince Albert itself is a very diverse community with different multicultural culture around here already.
“Plus, we also have a lot of our friends from the north as well who come to town. There’s really a very great mosaic of cultures. It’s so important to be able to learn from each other’s culture, (and) share our culture.”
Hassler said that the event is important for newcomers as it allows their children to see the culture their parents came from.
“It is so important for us to be able to pass along our culture to our children,” she said. “There’s that cultural continuity. There’s the sharing of culture.”
The event featured a diverse group of performers including the Iron Eagle Drum and Dance Group and Chinese Dance School of Saskatchewan on Saturday. It also included local performers the Creeland Dancers, Ashden School of Irish Dance and the returning Prince Albert Barveenok Ukrainian Dancers.
Hassler said they like to have a great mix of cultural offerings and entertainment over the two days.
“We try to put them as much as possible altogether, to showcase the diverse culture of Prince Albert, but also Saskatchewan in general,” Hassler said.
“We opened our day today with Lucas Welsh, Metis fiddle music, which is really nice. Then our great community of Vietnamese around here was very proud to showcase their culture.”
Hassler said they look at as many local cultures that Prince Albert has to offer.
She said having free admission to see the cultural performances was an advantage. She explained that the possible cultural offerings can change year to year.
“We are very grateful to have very good partnerships and relationships with most of the most multicultural groups around Saskatchewan, and we’d really love to continue that,” she explained. “It’s so nice that every year there’s always an interest—the performers wanting to come back and perform at Tapestrama.
She said that they can fill the two full days of performances quickly.
“We have only limited time, so we have to accommodate everybody as much as we can, the best we can,” she said.
Hassler said that the staff at the PAMC look forward to the event each year. She said she is fortunate to have a passionate staff.
“It’s an extra weekend of work but we love doing it,” she explained. “It is our passion. It is part of our mission and vision at the Prince Albert Multicultural Council.”
Hassler noted that she is also very passionate about the festival. She said that the goal is to create a welcoming environment.
“For just the recent, probably I would say, five, six years, we’ve seen a significant increased growth of our indigenous friends that comes in so that is one way of showing that it’s growing in Prince Albert. We would like to invite everybody. It’s open for everybody. Everybody is welcome,” Hassler said.
Hassler thanked all of the supporters for coming out each year in whatever way they could along with funders, sponsors and the staff and board.
“Hopefully we can keep cultural festivals like this in the community because funding sometimes can be really tough,” Hassler said.
“It’s hard and it’s tough to do the funding every year to do a wonderful event like this and so we do hope that our funders and sponsors will continue to support community festivals, cultural festivals like this, not only in PA, but everywhere because it is very important. It is really important.”
The event was one of many that are part of Culture Days in Prince Albert.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
