A first-of-its-kind twilight celebration involving music, dance, and visual storytelling will bring an artful end to summer in two weeks’ time.
The Sechelt Arts Festival — now in its 21st anniversary year — has spent the past six months establishing new traditions. The festival (originally held in late October) was reorganized in 2024 by the Sunshine Coast Arts Council and is now set to crescendo with a celebration of the ecology and heritage of the Salish Sea during a community cultural pageant in Davis Bay during the weekend of the autumn equinox.
Stories of the Estuary, on Sept. 21 at Mission Point near the mouth of Chapman Creek, will weave together the themes that have linked earlier exhibitions, workshops and dialogues.
“This has been a transition year,” explained Sadira Rodrigues, curator and director of the arts council. “We’re calling it the Festival Lite mainly because of the timing of funding and the transition of all of it.”
Nevertheless, events since March (such as the council’s springtime Young Artists Exhibition) were linked to this year’s festival theme: the vitality of the Salish Sea. Ongoing dialogues with Indigenous knowledge holders and mapping experts helped build a deeper understanding of the shíshálh Nation swiya (homeland). Musical performances and art exhibitions drove the message home over the summer.
On Sept. 21, the evening of song and interactive performances will begin at dusk with a community procession from the Davis Bay Pier (outfitted with flags marking the four cardinal directions) to Mission Point House.
Gerardo Avila, an acclaimed mime, puppeteer and poet based on the Sunshine Coast, has designed a participatory spectacle whose plot involves a mythical raven puppet named Equinox — and a human character swathed entirely in plastic.
“It’s about transformation,” said Avila. “The raven is the image of transformation in a variety of West Coast cultures, and it is the raven that invites the audience to change their ways.”
The goal, added Avila, is to encourage community members to reduce their use of plastic products, which wield a destructive environmental impact. A reduction of just 10 per cent would have a demonstrable impact on the health of marine life, he said. “It’s more than just recycling. It just has to stop. The emphasis of our performance will be making progress toward a clean, healthy and resilient ocean.”
The “plastic human” will perform a dance accompanied by plaintive cries from the raven to liberate humankind from its addiction to plastic.
Once reaching Mission House, the venue and its grounds will become the epicentre of musical performances coordinated by leaders of the shíshálh Nation and the Rogue Music Festival. Rogue Fest — currently on a hiatus year from its annual Wilson Creek festival — also collaborated with the arts council to produce musical performances at the Hackett Park Artisan Fair earlier this summer.
Japanese taiko drums and traditional drumming from members of the shíshálh Nation will be accompanied by a traditional raven dance. A ceremonial chant will prompt spectators to reflect on the synergy between sun, moon, air and water.
“What we’re wanting to do is create an encounter between arts, ecology and our specific climate here on the Coast,” said Rodrigues, who predicted that the festival’s focus on the Salish Sea will continue and widen its geographic scope in 2025. “Over the course of a number of years, we will be connecting to companion places.”
The so-called “micro festival” of Sept. 21 will feature live loop beats and vocals by The Walrus (Dean Hunt and Kachy), Mivule (a multicultural band incorporating reggae, Afrobeat and dub in English and Luganda, the language principally spoken in Uganda), digital storytelling by Kamala Todd, art making led by Jessica Silvey — whose daughters Ali and Bella Casey will also facilitate activities that promote learning about the land, and a “field school” session organized by the Sunshine Coast Conservation Society.
Stories of Estuary is a free community event that begins at the Davis Bay pier at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21.
