Staying busy despite the COVID shutdown
A stay-at-home holiday guide to local arts, artists, performance and culture
It’s a lower key holiday season this year, but even if we can’t travel and gather the way we normally would, we can still enjoy some great art, right at home.
Peterborough’s artists and arts, culture and heritage organizations have been here for you throughout the pandemic, and they’re here for you during the holiday season, too.
As theatres, galleries, concert halls, and meeting spaces dealt with the challenges of COVID-19, Peterborough’s creative community has still found ways to present events that keep us entertained and uplifted.
This holiday season is no different: there are a number of special events planned for over the holidays, and there’s a whole archive of material that’s online for you can catch up on over the break. So, we at the Electric City Culture Council (EC3) thought we’d present a holiday viewing guide for all the wonderful artistic projects that you can experience from home this holiday season.
What’s presented below is just a selection of all that Peterborough’s incredible arts and culture community has put out. There’s more out there from groups like Artspace, Showplace, the Canadian Canoe Museum, the Artisan Centre of Peterborough, and the Kawartha Potters Guild.
We encourage everyone to check out some of the events below, and to support the artists and organizations that are working so hard to bring them to you. The arts have been hit hard by the pandemic, and will continue to be affected even after there’s a vaccine.
Many of the groups listed below have places to donate through their website, to become a member, or to purchase merch. You can also donate to EC3’s Peterborough Arts Alive Fund, which is raising funds to provide strategic recovery and resilience grants for local arts organizations affected by COVID -19. Yo u can donate at cfgp.ca/project/arts-alive-fund/.
From all of us at EC3, Happy Holidays!
Enjoy it at home
The Pet e r b o r o u g h Singers (peterboroughsingers.com) have been a local institution for nearly three decades, and they know how to celebrate the holidays right, with the annual Yuletide Cheer concert and their annual performance of Handel’s Messiah. Those can’t happen in person this year, so instead they’ve moved online. If you head to the Peterborough Singers’ YouTube page, you’ll find a 75-minutelong “Virtual Yuletide Cheer” concert, featuring clips from across the years, as well as a recording of “Handel’s Messiah Part 1” from last year, featuring the talented young voices of the University of Toronto’s Historical Performance program.
Trent Radio (92.7FM and streaming online at trentradio.ca) is on a holiday schedule, including special productions and gems pulled from the radio archive, as well as a selection of new programming, including: Blues Themes Delivered by The Milkman, a.k.a. Blake Frazer (Thursdays at 9 p.m.), R&B and soul music on Soultictactics (Mondays at 8 p.m.), William Sadler’s Virtual Honky Tonk (Saturdays at 2 p.m.), and a rotating group of local DJs for Otonabeats (Tuesday at 8 p.m.)
The Peterborough Poetry Slam Collective hasn’t been able to meet for their raucous monthly slams since the beginning of the pandemic, but they have organized a range of events, including daily poetry prompts during #NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month – April) and, in recent months, the “Poetry on the Porch” series of outdoor events, livestreamed on Facebook and Instagram (@peterboroughpoetry). The Slam’s livestreaming schedule is done for the year (more in 2021!), but for now you can head to their Facebook and Instagram to watch archived versions of three Porch events.
The Art Gallery of Peterborough (agp.on.ca) has done a fantastic job of offering a wide slate of online activities for families at home during the pandemic. On their website, Family Sundays offers a new craft that’s seasonally appropriate and fun for the whole family every month – and all the previous months’ crafts are archived there as well. In-person at the AGP, you can check out “Presently,” an exhibition of works inspired by COVID-19 and the present moment, based on an open call that received submissions by 179 artists across Canada and beyond.
The Electric City Culture Council’s own Artsweek SHIFT is underway, which is presenting a range of arts events, in person and online, over the winter. In particular, head to @post_code_tour on Instagram for the Artsweek SHIFT project Post-Code Tour, which challenged three local artists to reimagine iconic downtown Peterborough spaces far into the future, with an eye toward accessibility and inclusion. Their posts went up throughout November and December, and are now archived as an online exhibition on Instagram. (Watch for some more Post-Code events, as well as other Artsweek SHIFT projects, in the new year!)
The ReFrame Film Festival (reframefilmfestival.ca) isn’t on just yet, but it’s a good time to pick up your festival passes for this iconic local documentary festival, which is moving online this year. Between Jan. 22 and 29, you can log on to stream dozens of films at your leisure from the comfort of your very own home. It’s like Netflix, but with a curated selection of excellent documentaries.
During the lockdown, Public Energy (publicenergy.ca), who present dance and multidisciplinary performances by local, national, and international artists, opened up the Rewind Room, offering 10 videos of past performances for free through their website, as well as on their YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram pages. A fascinating and unusual selection of works!
T h e S PA R K P h ot o Fe st i v a l (sparkphotofestival.org) had to postpone a lot of their events this year (until April 2021), but they too moved online. Through their website, you can view two virtual exhibitions: the 2020 juried exhibition “Motion,” and the special exhibition “Connection,” as captured by the talented photographers from the 2020 Open Call and SPARK exhibits. And photographers take note: the 2021 juried exhibition call for submissions and the open call for submissions were both announced earlier this month. The theme for the 2021 juried exhibition will be “Nourish: To Eat, To Drink, To Enjoy.” Details on the website.
The Peterborough Symphony Orchestra (thepso.org) is doing a special Brass Quintet Holiday Concert, broadcast from the Showplace stage and streamed into your living room, featuring a range of music for brass, from Bach and Handel to modern jazzy Christmas carols. The concert was initially broadcast on Dec. 19, was made available until Jan. 2. This is a ticketed event – find out more on their website. While you’re there check out all many fascinating videos the PSO has put out during the pandemic, including short performances and the Ask the Conductor series.
Did you know that Peterborough Public Library (ptbolibrary.ca) gives you access to a huge range of streaming services, for free? Stingray Qello has the world’s largest selection of on-demand full-length performances, concert films, and music documentaries. Acorn TV offers the best of British television and film. Hoopla features thousands of movies, television episodes and music albums. And there’s more. The library has also started offering a number of programs that you can access virtually – workshops and instructional classes, book clubs, and more. All available through their website.