The new mural on the side of the Prince Albert Public Library was unveiled on Monday. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW Staff)

By Nick Nielsen

Culture Days ends Oct 11

New pride mural unveiled in final week of Culture Days

Oct 8, 2024 | 3:00 PM

Culture Days have been going on throughout the city of Prince Albert over the last three weeks, and as part of it the Parks, Recreation, and Culture Department unveiled a new mural at the Prince Albert Public Library in celebration of pride in the community. The different free programs around the city have allowed for people to find out more about their artistic side with things like history walks, a tour of the EA Rawlinson Centre, and crafting sessions with festivities set to wrap up on October 11.

Arts and Culture Coordinator for the city Tia Furstenberg is the person responsible behind Culture Days as well as the coordination for putting the new pride mural together. She said that so far the events of Culture Days have been well attended, and the crowd that came out for the unveiling of the mural was just more proof of that.

“This is the last week now, and I’ve just heard so many great things from our community partners who have put up events. The museum had full participants for their Dakota history walk and talk with Dr. Omani and Tapestrama I heard had a great turn out as well, and lots of the Art Center programs had full registrants too, so that was really fabulous.”

With two weeks already in the books and just a week left of events left to go, the City is happy with how well the community seems to be buying into the fun. Some of the events have even surprised the committee with how well they were attended.

“I haven’t gotten all the feedback from all the committee members from their events just yet, but I know for the Art Center, the one that surprised me was the paint your own culture days swag. So folks got to come print and paint your own Culture Days swag, so they got to come and use a screen print and print the design of culture days logo and then they got to paint it in. We had well over 20 people come and partake, which is really awesome. It’s sometimes hard with free programs; you never know who’s going to show up.”

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While most of the events around the community during the week have seen the art created during Culture Days, the new pride mural at the Prince Albert Public Library has been a long work in progress. Furstenberg shares what some of that process has looked like taking notes from the community on what needed to be featured.

“I was so privileged to work with Alex Powalinsky and Lisa Halsal on this mural throughout the summer. We put out a call to photographers at the beginning of the summer because we really wanted it to be a collaborative mural and get submissions from folks who actually live in Prince Albert and really see what Prince Albert means to them and what pride in Prince Albert looks like because it’s different for everybody.”

From left to right: Tia Furstenberg, Alex Powalinsky, and Lisa Haslal as they unveil the new mural. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW Staff)

Powalisnky and Halsal were also in attendance to unveil their work. Photographers themselves, some of Powalisnky and Halsal’s photos are featured in the work along with photos submitted from the community.

“It really helped having a clearly defined focus from the city of wanting to capture and highlight the pride of our community, the people, the relationships and our Indigenous roots. We wanted to find a way to include every photo that we had and all the photos that were submitted, but there are so many to choose from that we really had to narrow in on that focus and find which ones highlighted the spirit and intent of the project.”

The new mural is themed around pride in the community, and not just in the LGBTQ+ sense. Along with LGBTQ+ imagery, the mural prominently displays things around the community such as Indigenous culture, the hockey scene with the Raiders and Mintos, the agriculture industry, forestry, parks, and more woven into the quilt inspired design.

That was done by design according to the earlier mentioned Powalinsky. When putting together the design, Powalisnky said that as members of the LGBTQ+ community themselves, it was important to show that pride from other organizations.

“Our pride from comes from our ability to be able to be our authentic selves, contribute to our community and see that reflected back from the community. By being able to include people being authentic within themselves and within their place in the community, gender diversity and people’s sexual orientation is one piece of that and it we wanted to really highlight the power that we can harness as a group when people have the freedom and support to be who they are.

Powalisnky continued, “It was really not to center one group, although we are part of the LGBT community, we wanted to ensure that we were showing that it’s something that benefits everybody when we can have that space for everyone to be authentic.”

A week’s worth of events are still scheduled for Culture Days with the final day on October 11. Powalinsky and Halsal are both hosting the final event, a Zine Making Workshop where people will get to create their own small self designed publication with photos and words about the culture in Prince Albert. Powalinsky encouraged anyone, even if they don’t consider themselves ‘artistic’ to come out and give it a try.

“We have such an amazing arts community and even this mural is an example of that. The collaboration and the community in this mural, how it came together, so many people were part of it and it went so well and that’s a real testament to the community here in P.A. with our arts culture. So to people who feel like an artist but don’t know if they can be one or who are scared to start creating, we want to inspire them to just do it and that your art has value and there’s meaning in it not only for yourself, but for other people.”

A full list of the Culture Days events left are available on the Culture Days website that you can find by clicking here.

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Nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com