New Westminster residents are invited to celebrate the arts in one of the city’s favourite outdoor spaces.
The Queen’s Park Arts Festival is set for July 6 to 10, with a lineup that includes poetry, a community dance, a children’s art festival and music of many genres.
The Arts Council of New Westminster kicks off the festivities at the bandshell on Wednesday, July 6, with a 6:30 p.m. Indigenous welcome from Brody Halfe of the Qayqayt First Nation.
The evening will also include Poetry in the Park, presented by the Royal City Literary Arts Society, featuring New Westminster poet laureate Elliot Slinn and poet laureate emerita Candice James.
There’s also a Casual Coding session in Centennial Lodge, presented by the New Media Gallery and the Arts Council of New Westminster, where people of all experience levels can sit down, have a beverage, learn coding and watch generative art being created — and displayed and projected throughout the room as that creation unfolds.
You can also stop in to the Gallery at Queen’s Park between 6 and 8 p.m. to check out the Transits and Reveries exhibition, featuring art by Sherida Charles.
The fun continues over the following four days. Some highlights:
Thursday, July 7
- 7 p.m.: The Keith MacLachlan Quartet — drummer MacLachlan, saxophonist Ben Lockwood, bassist Emilio Suarez and keyboardist Tim Wyatt — presents a lively book of jazz standards from the bebop, post-bebop and cool jazz eras.
Friday, July 8
- 7 p.m.: Community dance with Royal City Swing
Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10
Noon to 5 p.m.: Children’s art festival at the Queen’s Park Farm
Saturday, July 9
- 2 p.m.: William Chernoff Jazz Trio, with Chernoff on bass, Francis Henson on guitar and Carson Tworow on drums
- 4:30 p.m.: Burnaby Summer Theatre
- 7 p.m.: Gina Williams, award-winning, multi-genre pianist-singer-songwriter-composer
Sunday, July 10
- 2 p.m.: Jocelyn Pettit and Ellen Gira, a fiddle and cello duo fusing contemporary and traditional influences, with original tunes and songs alongside Celtic repertoire and lively stepdancing
- 4:30 p.m.: Purpose Society Music Showcase
- 7 p.m.: Pointed Sticks bring their punk/power pop sounds to the stage to headline the festival. The band was originally founded in August of 1978, disbanded in 1981 and reformed in 2006.
Get all the latest updates at the Queen's Park Arts Festival webpage.
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
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