{"id":3438,"date":"2013-08-07T15:54:37","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T19:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=3438"},"modified":"2013-08-14T15:01:26","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T19:01:26","slug":"culture-is-stronger-together-says-aurora-roundtable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/culture-is-stronger-together-says-aurora-roundtable\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture is stronger together, says Aurora Roundtable"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

King Arthur may have had his roundtable, but Aurora\u2019s cultural scene has Jane Taylor and Reccia Mandelcorn to maintain its honour.<\/p>\n

Both women, Ms. Taylor of the Aurora Cultural Centre and Ms. Mandelcorn of the Aurora Public Library, help spearhead the Aurora Cultural Roundtable, a group which brings together the collective brainpower and resources of not just the respective organizations, but also the Aurora Historical Society, Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market, and Theatre Aurora. <\/p>\n

Now going into their second year as a collective, the group is busy putting the finishing touches on a program for Culture Days next month which promises to be a feast for the senses, and a source of food for the mind, body and the soul. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Aurora Cultural Roundtable is the name the group eventually came up with after much deliberation,\u201d says Ms. Mandelcorn. \u201cJane and I had collaborated on items before and we had been talking about how wonderful it would be to have the Library and the Cultural Centre collaborate on some individual programs. At the same time, and parallel to that, there was a conversation going on between our CEO and [Cultural Centre Executive Director] Laura Schembri about the need for some of the cultural organizations in Aurora to be able to talk, share, and collaborate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their first meeting took place in June of 2012. From there, they looked at \u201cculture\u201d from a very broad perspective. Bringing together the Market and Theatre, they aimed to get down to the basics of what they hoped to provide to the community, ensure that they didn\u2019t overlap, but also make sure there were opportunities to cross-promote, support, and make sure \u201cculture\u201d is promoted as a team effort. <\/p>\n

Their first opportunity to put the plan in action was early last fall when Aurora made its first foray into \u201cCulture Days\u201d, a national drive to celebrate all things which could be classified as \u201cculture\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was on board and we all came up with a different program,\u201d says Ms. Mandelcorn. \u201cWe made sure we had a wide variety of offerings for the community to make sure we weren\u2019t taking the same audience, collaborated so we would be able to maximize media in the community and it was really, really successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collaboration continued well beyond Culture Days 2012. Throughout this spring and summer, for instance, the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market has regularly provided space for the Library for story time and other programs, which have been a hit with local youngsters, and other events to get these programs to as wide an audience as possible. <\/p>\n

The collaboration will once again culminate in Culture Days 2013. Building on the success of last year\u2019s events, they came away with ideas of what to do, what not to do, and good ideas which needed a little bit of tweaking. This year builds upon that foundation. <\/p>\n

The Aurora Public Library, for instance, will host a \u201chuman library\u201d, featuring the chance to \u201csign out\u201d real people in the community with real stories to share for a time to answer all your \u201cburning questions\u201d about their field of work or experience. This year\u2019s roster of \u201cbooks\u201d, include local author Gerry Fostady, award-winning musicians Bonnie Silver and Norbert Kraft, and local horticulturalist, poet and artist Dierdre Tomlinson.
\nThe Aurora Historical Society will welcome Culture Days participants once again to Hillary House for a full day of activities as well as a chance to see ongoing exhibitions on health, recreation, and culinary arts.<\/p>\n

The Culinary theme continues at the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market with tastes from days gone by. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all doing different activities and people are going to have a really fun day,\u201d says Ms. Mandelcorn. \u201cBetween 9 a.m. and 12 noon, the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market is doing \u2018A Taste of Yesteryear\u2019. All of the chefs are using locally sourced ingredients and they are going to be creating and preparing dishes on site. Food is culture and that is part of the human condition, but it is going to be fun and delicious. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people come to the library, children will have a story time, the Human Library \u2013 and all of our books are local! People will be able to engage in something that is exciting, new and refreshing in a way that is \u2018Aurora.\u2019 I hope they will come away with a sense of fun and a sense of culture in their community, as well as a sense that culture is endemic with the human condition.\u201d
\nCulture Days gets underway at 9 a.m. on Saturday, September 28.<\/p>\n

When Culture Days 2013 is another chapter for the history books, that won\u2019t be the end of the collaboration until 2014. Ms. Mandelcorn says the community can look forward to much more collaboration. The reason? Well, above the fact they are simply having fun doing it, they believe it is good for the community. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that people are very sharing in nature,\u201d she says, \u201cand all of us come away a little stronger than where we started.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Culture Days activities going on in Aurora and indeed across Canada, visit www.culturedays.ca.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

King Arthur may have had his roundtable, but Aurora\u2019s cultural scene has Jane Taylor and Reccia Mandelcorn to maintain its honour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3439,"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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-Ts","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-14 17:24:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/2013-08-07-03.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438","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=3438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}