{"id":24016,"date":"2019-06-20T18:03:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24016"},"modified":"2019-06-28T11:30:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T15:30:27","slug":"cultural-centre-marks-10th-anniversary-with-a-welcome-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/cultural-centre-marks-10th-anniversary-with-a-welcome-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Centre marks 10th anniversary with a Welcome Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a few short decades ago, the Church Street School\nwas a home away from home for generations of Aurora students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a building that sparked the imagination for\ncountless young minds and, over the last decade, sparks have continued to fly\nwithin its walls as home to the Aurora Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as the Aurora Cultural Centre prepares to mark its\ntenth anniversary, they are going back to their roots for an ambitious new\nseason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Cultural Centre lifted the curtain on its\n2019-2020 season last week at a dazzling evening for its patrons and loyal\nguests that featured live music and the sounds of dance ringing through its\nhistoric walls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are launching our tenth anniversary season, a season\nwelcoming new and past artists to Aurora to celebrate ten years of delivering\narts and culture to the community,\u201d said Suzanne Haines, Executive Director of\nthe Aurora Cultural Centre. \u201cWe\u2019re proud to be here tonight after ten years of\nhard work, building capacity, with and for our partners, and gaining a\nreputation for strong, professional programming in the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has not always been easy, and the fruits of this\nlabour are seen in the long-standing and loyal patrons, sponsors, board\nmembers, volunteers and staff. When we started thinking about the theme for\nthis tenth anniversary, we kept talking about what we were hearing from\nartists: that the Aurora Cultural Centre felt like home. We remembered how\nexcited we would get every time a student from the schoolhouse came to visit,\nand they talked about how it was a home for them. We thought about the history\nof this building and our part in making it an active place once again over the\nlast ten years and decided not only to welcome home those in the community who\nmay not have been here for a while to return, but also we wanted it to be a\nhome for the next decade and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of \u201cWelcome Home\u201d is very much reflected in the\n2019-2020 Gallery Season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Gallery Manager Clare Bolton, the last\ndecade has seen the Cultural Centre evolve into \u201ca welcoming home for\ncreativity in the community and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea of Welcome Home has become a familiar thread\nthroughout this gallery season,\u201d said Ms. Bolton. \u201cWe highlight the importance\nof partnerships, inclusion and diversity. We’re so incredibly proud of the\ncommunity relationships we have been able to build with our groups, such as the\nSociety of York Region Artists and the Pine Tree Potters Guild. Each year, on\naverage, we have showcased over 200 emerging professional artists on these\nhistorical walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor some artists, showcasing with us has been their\nfirst opportunity to present their work in a professional gallery. On numerous\noccasions, we have invited artists back to either teach at the Centre or become\na participant in a group show, or bring another project to the Centre. Artists\nfrom diverse backgrounds consistently tell me how welcome they feel. We have\nbuilt strong relationships as we have grown over the years, our ways of seeing\nprograms develop to enhance the gallery experience for visitors. Artists have\ncome into the galleries and facilitated demos, workshops, art talks, guided\ntours with the public, and we have been able to offer these programs at no\ncharge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the highlights of the Gallery Season will be the\nPine Tree Potters Guild\u2019s 40th<\/sup> annual Juried Show and Sale,\nfeaturing nearly 50 new works from local artists. The Society of York Region\nArtists (SOYRA) will be back with their annual Showcase Exhibition, this year\nbuilt around the theme of Curious Minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the winter, young artists from Aurora\u2019s four high\nschools will once again have the chance to show off their talents at the eighth\nannual Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More broadly, August 31 will see the exhibition \u201cLight\nGrows the Tree\u201d take over the gallery spaces, curated by Liz Ikriko, which\ndocuments and showcases a community of Black artists, writers, collectors and\ncurators in Toronto, photographed by four artists over the course of two\nmonths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She Flourishes, a solo exhibition by Gaia Orion takes\nover October. Subtitled \u201cCreating a Vision for a Peaceful World,\u201d it is\nintended to foster conversation about \u201cwomen\u2019s qualities and leadership in\ntoday\u2019s world and how women have the powerful potential to transform.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Above the main floor gallery spaces, all varieties of\nmusic will form the Aurora Cultural Centre\u2019s upcoming live music season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI started here over a decade ago when these doors\nweren\u2019t even open and music ringing out in Brevik Hall was just a dream,\u201d said\nJane Taylor of the Aurora Cultural Centre. \u201cIn the intervening years, we have\nworked with our community to bring a wide variety of professional performing\nartists to the stage to grow the number, variety and genres of concerts and to\nensure there is a broad representation and a bit of experimentation as we push\nout the edges of our programming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brevik Hall Music Series features \u201cCanadian artists\nworking in beloved genres and at the pinnacle of their craft,\u201d said Ms. Taylor,\nof the lineup that includes such artists as Rum Ragged, the Laila Biali Jazz\nTrio, Patricia O\u2019Callaghan and Friends, and perennial Cultural Centre favourite\nJohn Sheard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are award-winning artists who continue to make their\nmark on the Canadian Music landscape and frequently find themselves on the\nairwaves and in the recording studio and atop the awards podium,\u201d said Ms.\nTaylor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another highlight of the live music program is the return of\nthe Great Artist classical music series, which is sponsored by Grammy Award\nwinners Bonnie and Norbert Kraft. This year\u2019s lineup features a number of new,\nreturning and emerging artists including Celil Refik Kaya, Janina Fialkowska,\nthe Payadora Tango Ensemble, and Crozman & Chiu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom the first year that we started the classical music\nseries, we have been able to present exceptional musicians coming to share\ntheir artistry with us, musicians who have played at Carnegie Hall with the\ngreat orchestras of the world, yet they have all expressed the specialness of\nplaying in our intimate space, and for our wonderful Aurora audience,\u201d said Ms.\nKraft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo matter how easy it is to listen to music on various\ndevices, nothing compares to the experience of live music. In this day of ear\nbuds and listening in the car, it is easy to forget that those digital\ndownloads are not the real thing. Convenient, yeah, but a digital recording is\nonly a sampling, a one-dimensional representation of the whole sound spectrum.\nListening to music being performed right in front of us, oh, what a totally\ndifferent experience it is. It is a whole other world; a world where we find\nourselves catching our breath with a beautiful phrase, feeling our hearts race\nwith excitement, our eyes opening wide at the performer’s skill, or even\nsometimes feeling a tear welling up in what the music invokes in our soul, and\nall in the company of others around us. Live music has that power to bring us\ntogether at the deepest level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on the 2019-2020 Welcome Home series, visit auroraculturalcentre.ca. <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a few short decades ago, the Church Street School was a home away from home for generations of Aurora students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-20-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6fm","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-02 17:28:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}