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Dickens Reading and Quebec Arts Summit

by Gaetanne Séguin

The holiday season celebrates both tradition and resolutions to change for the better. With both those ideals in mind, the final RAWQ Report of this year looks at changes being made by Quebec artists to improve their profile in 2005, and a favourite Christmas tradition coming to Aylmer later this month.

Once again this year, the Regional Association of West Quebecers is presenting the dramatic reading of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” featuring Gemini award-winning actress Meredith Henderson as our celebrity reader. Meredith participated in the 1^st annual reading last year which was a great success, and she has agreed to join some local talent again this year despite her very hectic schedule preparing for the starring role in the upcoming made-for-TV-movie about Shania Twain’s life story.

There will be two performances at 2pm and 8pm on Saturday December 18^th at Christ Church, 101 Symmes Street in Aylmer. The tickets are $10-dollars for adults and $8-dollars for seniors and children 12-to-16 years of age.  We hope you’ll make a point to come to what promises to be a memorable performance, and support a worthy cause at the same time; all proceeds from the Dickens’ reading will go towards St. Vincent de Paul’s “Feed-a-Child” program. If you’d like a ticket, give me a call at 682-9602.

The Dickens’ Reading will provide a taste of the rich Anglophone artistic talent in Quebec. Many of the English-speaking artists in this province have long been overshadowed by their French counterparts in terms of publicity, public recognition and government funding, but that is about to change.

I had the privilege of joining about 120 Quebec English-speaking writers, musicians, actors, dancers, visual and media artists and filmmakers, and 75 government and community partners at the first ever Quebec Arts Summit November 25-27 in Montreal, and it’s being called a major success. A new English-Language Arts Network, ELAN, is being formed, and organizers say it could have a major impact on the future of English-language artists and their organizations in Quebec.

 

During the Summit, the artists met with English-language educators, media and presenters to explore ways to set up new partnerships and to strengthen existing ones. On the final day, the artists met with government officials to ask for support from federal government minority language programmes, and they say both the provincial and federal governments are ready to discuss new minority-language programmes with ELAN. 

Representatives from all the disciplines involved in ELAN met again this week to begin shaping a more detailed development plan and to launch a wider consultation process with the English-language artistic community. They expect to have their first meetings with federal government officials within the next week. 

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