Starting tomorrow and lasting until Sunday is the 4th annual Sima Festival:Wintering Together, which is being hosted by the Outdoor Artist Collective and the Sherwood Mountain Brewhouse.
This is a festival that has been going on for close to half a decade now and it’s always taken place in January while also focusing on winter based themes.
One of the Outdoor Artist Collective’s co-founders, Anne Isabelle Leonard, explained some of the events that are going to be happening at the festival this year;
“The festival opens up on Thursday January 15th, and we have two main events there. We have a really great screening of a documentary film at the Sherwood Hall, then we’re holding the Sima Winter Ball, where we invite everybody to come and read a story or listen to poems and there’ll be some live music. Going into Friday, we have a Dancing in the Dark event at the Thornhill Hall. On Saturday we have many different events. At the REM Lee, we have some mountain films that are going to be shown with the SkeenaWild best of the fest. Then on Sunday there’s going to be an ice skating dance party at the arena that’s free for everybody with some free rentals. And we’re closing the festival with two cozy concerts at the banquet room in the Terrace Arena.”
Leonard then went onto explain a bit about the main reason that the Collective puts on this festival;
“We started this festival with the idea of bringing people together during the darkest months of the year. Both Taylor and I are artists and we live art in such a way that we realize it brings people together and it’s used as a way to address difficult subjects. Whether it be political or environmental or social. Art allows people that don’t necessarily talk to come together, address these subjects and just have fun together.”
More information about the events as well as which days they occur on can be found at the Outdoor Artist Collective’s Facebook Page and at the Sima Festival website.