Saanich Peninsula Arts and Culture Grant Program

SPACG Grants Awarded

ArtSea would like to congratulate the following grant recipients and thank them for their contribution to arts and culture in our community! We also recognize the Town of Sidney and the District of North Saanich that provide the funding stream for these grants and bursaries.

A SPACG Grant was awarded to Island Echo, a performance choir dedicated to performing at local fundraisers, charity and community events. Island Echo is a performance choir consisting of 35 of our Island Song choir members. Island Echo benefits the residents of Saanich Peninsula by bringing the joy of music to local community events (such as the Salish Sea Lantern Festival), brightening lives at local long care term facilities during the holiday season, and supporting important fundraising and awareness initiatives. Our goal is to spread joy through the beauty of song, whilst supporting meaningful local events.

An Inclusive Women’s Community Choir

Island Song is a non-audition pop choir where self-identified women, non-binary, and two-spirit individuals in the Saanich Peninsula, BC can sing for fun. Our repertoire encompasses pop, folk, and other contemporary genres. Our songs are arranged by the community for the community and span the soprano and alto vocal ranges. We learn our songs through call and response, recorded tracks and sheet music, and all levels of experience are invited to sing with us.

Contact: info@islandsongchoir.ca.

Deep Cove Folk was awarded SPACG funding in 2024 to help with the development and distribution of a book of “songs of place” set on the Saanich Peninsula. Saanich Songs will be a digital volume full of songs written about and by our community. It will showcase and support not only our local songwriters but also some of our artists and photographers offering support and visibility to many of our local creative folk and contribute meaningfully to our cultural lives. Saanich Songs will be based, in part, on our recent song writing competition (with the support of SPACG funding) but involves many more songs and has a much broader focus.

In 2023, Deep Cove Folk received a SPACG Grant to support their inaugural “Songwriting Project”. They asked people from all across our community (e.g., high schools, First Nations and an “open” category) to submit songs they’ve written about life on the Saanich Peninsula (e.g., mentioning names of places, people or events or, perhaps, based on historical events). Selected songwriters were offered the opportunity to perform their creations at Deep Cove Folk. The qualifying songs and essays were also be published on the DCF website, and one-on-one mentorships were offered to young contributors, with the goal of helping to kickstart their artistic endeavours.

Deep Cove Folk Initiative: learn more, or submit your song: https://songproject.deepcovefolk.ca/

Deep Cove Folk launches project seeking songs about the Saanich Peninsula

Article by Brenan Mayer, PNR Jan. 11, 2024

The winning songwriter will take home $1,000

Deep Cove Folk has launched a contest asking artists to write songs about the Saanich Peninsula.

The contest’s judges will be looking for songs that are clearly situated in local communities. The tunes could mention names of local people, events or people.

“There aren’t a lot of really good songs about the Saanich Peninsula,” Deep Cove Folk co-director Tim Rogers said. “We’re hoping we can plug that hole.”

The project will have categories for Indigenous people, high school students and an open category.

“We certainly want to represent as many different points of view as we can,” Rogers said. “The product we are hoping to see will be a compendium of songs about the Saanich Peninsula. Sort of like a musical history.”

The artist who writes the song that the judges believe is the best overall will win $1,000, and two runner-up prizes of $500 will also be given out.

“One of the major goals is to get more people appreciating, thinking about and understanding the importance of music to the community,” Rogers said. “We’re trying to increase the general interest in local music.’

Rogers says some of the tunes may be performed by local choirs. Winners will also be offered opportunities to perform their songs, and the artist chosen in the high school category will get to take part in a mentoring session with an accomplished songwriter.

The judges haven’t been chosen yet, but Rogers says they will be musical experts.

“We’re thinking of trying to get people that are fairly well-known,” Rogers added. “I’m currently negotiating with a number of people to be the judges.”

Submissions must include a short essay about the song which includes the inspiration for writing it and how it fits into life on the Saanich Peninsula. Musicians can even submit songs they’ve already written.

Rogers says the ArtSea Community Arts Council has provided around $4,800 for the project.

“That’s going to help is with the prize money and allow us to put up posters,” Rogers added. “They’ve been very generous.”

The Sidney and Peninsula Literary Society was awarded SPACG funding to support the 2024 Sidney and Peninsula Literary Society Reading Series, and the 2023 Sidney LitFest. The project celebrates readers, writers and the written word. The festival opened with celebrated author and CBC host of Quirks and Quarks, Bob McDonald and a discussion of his new book, The Future is Now: Solving the Climate Crisis with Today’s Technologies. The festival also included a moderated panel discussion with five authors reading from their works, activities with author led workshops and author readings, a small panel discussion, and a moderated author discussion.

The Palm Court Light Orchestra was awarded SPACG funding to support The Palm Court Light Orchestra 2024/25 and the 2023/24 Season. The purpose of the orchestra is to perform what is known as light orchestral music, palm court music or salon music. It presents an annual concert series of three concerts at the Charlie White Theatre, Sidney. It presents music that is rarely performed . It also performs Canadian musicians presents Canadian artist both local and national. The Orchestra has a special relationship with our Sidney audience , especially our senior audience which is why we present afternoon concerts, music that they enjoy, and affordable prices in a secure, caring environment. We perform music that relates to the age of our audience. Often described as nostalgia it has both educational and historical significance.

The Palm Court Light Orchestra present’s the first concert of its 2024/25 Season at the Charlie White Theatre. Founded in 1987 by conductor Charles Job, the professional 28 piece orchestra is led by violinist Pablo Diemecke and features soloist mezzo soprano Kiiri Michelsen. The programme includes waltzes, marches, delightful songs and selections from Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years and Irving Berlins “Annie Get Your Gun.”      

The ArtsREACH program was awarded SPACG funding to provide ‘artist in residence’ workshops in the 3 identified Community Link Schools (vulnerable schools as identified by the Ministry of Education- Brentwood, Sidney and Kelset Elementary schools as well as Lau Welnew Tribal School. The final goal will be to display the art by these students at the Panorama Rec Centre (the Rec centre will have children’s art that they have produced on site and we will combine the art display). As well we hope to have ‘smaller displays’ to rotate around the Peninsula area~ (possibly) malls, Assisted living centres, library, hospital. The families will come and be so pleased (and proud) of the young artists, Rec Centre and other venues will enjoy and celebrate and ‘talk amongst themselves as they look at the displayed art….just as a group would in other galleries. Art for the love of art. Children do not often have opportunities to show their art in a public setting.

artsREACH Art Exhibit

Funding provided through the SPACG Grant in 2023 helped artsREACH to deliver some fantastic arts programming to 45+ children.

Children’s artwork, created through this program, is being showcased at Panorama Recreation from January 31st until March 16^th 2024.

An informal open house will be held on

Sunday Feb 11^th 2024 from 2-4pm.

The Peninsula Folk & Fiddle Society, is a non-profit arts organization run by music lovers, based on the Saanich peninsula and dedicated to the presentation of diverse traditional and contemporary music styles including but not limited to Celtic, Roma, Black American Music, Bluegrass, First Nations, Jazz, Folk, Singer-songwriter and Indie.

The Folk & Fiddle Festival is held annually over three days at The Mary Winspear Centre and additional surrounding venues. We are the only music festival on the Saanich Peninsula and the only Folk Festival in the greater Victoria area. We work with indigenous communities including the three reserves on the Saanich peninsula to build cultural understanding and diversity through music presentation and education. We believe that diverse and high quality music presentations are key to building strong communities, and strong communities are the fabric of our nation. The festival brings people from the CRD to Sidney and that brings money to the Sidney area as many people eat in Sidney and shop before the concerts Over 700 people attended the festival and we have been planning this year to have some extra public free concerts.

As we head into our 37^th season in 2024, Eine Kleine Summer Music continues to be dedicated to presenting concerts performed at the highest artistic level, by our very own local, provincial, national, and international musicians in dynamic and memorable concerts to share with our audiences of the Saanich Peninsula. We are very grateful for the generous donation from ArtSea. This donation will directly help us to achieve our goal of bringing outstanding performers to EKSM this upcoming season. It will allow us to achieve our utmost goal – to share, enrich, and bring contentment and joy to our valued and devoted audience and to our dedicated volunteers.

Images and Brochure from the 2023 Eine Kline Summer Music Concerts

EKSM is run by an all volunteer board of directors as well as 2 artistic directors who are given honoraria. Tickets are kept as low as possible allowing top quality performances affordable for seniors, students, and the general public of the Saanich Peninsula. The musical works for the concerts are selected from the best of the classical repertoire. EKSM hopes to spread appreciation for chamber music making t less intimidating and in fact, most enjoyable for the residents of the Saanich Peninsula.

The Sidney Concert Band was awarded SPACG funding to help with the purchase of a a PA system to  amplify our vocalists and our Master of ceremonies at various events in the community (schools, concerts, etc.). This system will be used at our weekly rehearsals for our director’s communication ability and for our vocalists. We will also use this system while doing concerts at

local schools and our yearly concert in the Sidney Bandshell. We have previously rented a PA system for these events.

The Via Choralis Performance Society was awarded a SPACG grant to support their performances in 2024 and 2023.

The Via Choralis Performance Society, Sidney’s “neighbourhood” choir, turns 25 this year! Our repertoire has ranged from Handel’s Messiah through the celebration of culinary delights to the commemoration of armistice day. The polished performance of this music has located us near the cultural heart of the Saanich Peninsula.

With the devastating impact of Covid behind us, we now prepare to celebrate the joys of spring in a variety of songs, many from well-known Broadway musicals. Plan to join us at 2:00pm on Sunday, April 28 at St. Elizabeth’s Church on Third St. Sidney for a concert: “It might as well be Spring” featuring guest artist, Lawrence Skaggs (McPherson Trio, 35 years principal cellist with the Victoria Symphony), who will join our pianist, Yousef Shadian for a “divertimento” during the intermission.

The Via Choralis Performance Society was awarded SPACG funding to support their musical performance, “Till a’ the Seas Gang Dry–Songs of Love and Devotion.”  This project is a continuation of our service to the community: providing reasonably priced, quality entertainment performed by a local community choir and giving local musicians an opportunity to display and develop their talents.