On Monday, July 29, almost 1,500 attendees filed into a faux arts centre created at 393 Seymour Street to experience arts and culture in an immersive event at the future home of the Kamloops Centre for the Arts. Despite unpredictable weather, the Build Kamloops Celebration of the Arts was a huge success in celebrating the arts, raising funds for local arts organizations, and sharing information about the proposed Kamloops Centre for the Arts.
Using temporary road markings, the surface parking lot was transformed into the actual floor plan of the Kamloops Centre for the Arts, highlighting future aspects of the building, such as doorways, a stage in Theatre 1, a Stage (Bar) in Theatre 2, an animated greenroom, a box office, café, bathroom facilities (Lux Loos), a chandelier, and even a partial staircase where one will perhaps exist in the future.
The event was flooded with entertainment intended to inspire audiences on what they could expect at the Kamloops Centre for the Arts: roaming acts, a graffiti art battle, a flash mob, and numerous dance performances from Let’s Move Studio; an instrument zoo, youth musicians, and a quartet from Kamloops Symphony; an interactive box office, complete with takeaway mementos, character tours of the building, a greenroom interactive scene, and emcee duties from Western Canada Theatre; a Kamloops Museum & Archives interactive wall; a Kamloops Film Society experience zone; a wedding photo booth under the chandelier; an award presentation by Rivers FC; a faux graduation by Thompson Rivers University; and speeches from arts organization leadership, Deputy Mayor Nancy Bepple, and past mayors Mel Rothenburger, Peter Milobar, and Ken Christian speaking on the historic need for an arts centre.
Food trucks and food booths provided the eats, and Amplified Café, Bright Eye Brewing, and Monte Creek Winery provided the drinks.
The event also featured the unveiling of a new 1:100 scale model of the Kamloops Centre for the Arts, created by Robert Baker and Ross Nichol. Attendees were able to look inside, identify the theatre and common spaces, and get a sense of how the building will fit on the lot. The model is now on display at Kelson Hall.
The inception and delivery of this event was driven by the community to fill a gap created by the absence of the Mayor’s Gala for the Arts, an annual fundraising event that acknowledged and celebrated arts and culture in Kamloops from 2006 to 2019 before being sidelined by COVID-19. The organizing committee had representatives from the Kamloops Centre for the Arts Society, the Kamloops Art Gallery, the Kamloops Film Society, the Kamloops Symphony, Western Canada Theatre, and City of Kamloops staff and Council.
The Build Kamloops Celebration of the Arts event was a $90,000+ event, but cash and gift-in-kind sponsorship came in at over $55,000 from Amplified Café, Nandi’s Flavours of India, Kamloops Symphony, Gravity Fair, Copper Equipment Rentals, GK Sound, Casa Azul, Monte Creek Winery, Lordco Autoparts, Bright Eye Brewing, RBC. A $20,000 contribution was also provided by The Kelson Group, who continue to champion and support this project. The City of Kamloops portion of the budget came in at $35,000, funded from the $1 million allocated by Mayor and Council from the Growing Community Fund grant for creation of the plans and for promoting the Build Kamloops need.
Entry to the event was by donation, which raised $5,771.35 for the four arts organizations represented on the organizing committee.
