Biggar & District Arts Council

Rumour Mill, led by lifetime friends Anna Katarina and Aline Deanna, creates inclusive music that resonates globally. As songwriters, multi-instrumentalists, producers, and performers, they push genre and social norms. Their 4-piece band live show highlights songs from their recent album, What She Said, showcasing a sound akin to Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow and First Aid Kit. The show is dynamic and engaging, with rotating lead vocals, 3-part harmonies and varied instrumentation blending traditional fiddle and mandolin with electric guitar and keyboards. Rumour Mill's goal is to connect with audiences, making each performance enjoyable and relatable through humour and meaningful lyrics.

The Prairie Sons, cellist David Liam Roberts, and pianist Godwin Friesen, draw inspiration from the vast Canadian West. They met at the Glenn Gould School of Music and share a deep connection to their Prairie roots. Both awarded and featured in CBC's Hot 30 Classical Musicians Under 30, their concert program reflects their expansive perspective. The Prairie Sons' energy and innovation offer a fresh perspective on their homeland, inviting you to see the everyday as a miracle in the picturesque Canadian landscape.

Experience the hit comedy about depression & gratitude: EVERY BRILLIANT THING, by Duncan Macmillan, with Jonny Donahoe, starring Elizabeth Nepjuk. "You’re seven years old. Mum’s in hospital. Dad says she’s ‘done something stupid’. She finds it hard to be happy. You start a list of everything worth living for. 1. Ice Cream. 2. Rollercoasters. 3. Peeing in the lake and nobody knows... You leave the list on her pillow. You know she's read it because she's corrected your spelling." Twenty years & thousands of things later, the list takes on a life of its own. This astonishingly funny, unforgettable solo performance dives deep into mental health & the lengths we go to for those we love. Based on true & untrue stories. "Hilarious... one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see." -The Guardian

The Wardens don’t just sing about the land, they’re part of it. The Rocky Mountain-based band’s stories and songs rise from the very land they’ve protected as Canadian national park wardens. With haunting three-part harmonies and chilling tales, the band’s mountain music - blending folk, roots and western styles " reflects Canada's protected wilderness areas. Celebrating the return of wild buffalo, wrangling grizzly bears, lonely nights on the packtrail and reflecting on an environment in crisis, a performance by The Wardens has been dubbed "the quintessential mountain-culture concert experience."

You might hear the tunes of the Misery Mountain Boys drifting from behind a rotating bookcase of a 1930’s speakeasy. Harkening back to a simpler time, the MMB’s music is infused with tongue in cheek wit, playfulness, and nostalgia. With a mix of catchy originals and contemporary songs reimagined in driving swing, the band’s performance delivers as both classic and fresh. The band offers a generous variety of sweaty jazz numbers, velvety love songs, and swingin' jump-blues, with plenty of lighthearted stories and laughs along the way.

Omentum is a series of 10 paintings that touch on several of the major experiences faced by Indigenous people in this country within recent memory. These paintings, influenced by the works of both Norval Morrisseau and also Pablo Picasso, speak to some of the major struggles and triumphs that are part of our everyday life as Indigenous people, such as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Cultural Appropriation, the legacy of Residential Schools, the Rise and Honour of the Two-Spirited in the LGBTQ, the Return of Traditional Indigenous Tattooing, the Rise in Systemic Racism Online, and, of course, the Murder of Colten Boushie. John Brady McDonald is a Nehiyawak-Métis writer, artist, historian, musician, playwright, actor and activist born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nehiyawak. The great-great-great grandson of Chief Mistawasis of the Plains Cree, as well as the grandson of famed Métis leader Jim Brady, John’s writings and artwork have been displayed in various publications, private and permanent collections and galleries around the world, including the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

The Burden of Street brings together paintings that depict contradictory compositions to provide distinct visual experiences while exploring the complexities of our surrounding built environment. The element of the wall plays a significant role in this body of work as public sites for dwellers to engage with the political and social fabric of society. These paintings aim to explore the dichotomy of walls as both tools of control and platforms for resistance. They delve into how authorities use these walls to impose their ideologies and values upon the people, while also emphasizing the agency of dissidents who transform these spaces into channels of protest and expression. A diverse range of artistic techniques and mediums, including collage, painting, drawing, and graffiti, are used to create satirical and ironic situations that reference the deep dualities, disparities, and hypocrisies inherent in ruling systems. Iranian born visual artist, Mohadese Movahed focuses on painting in her studio practice. She graduated with a Bachelor of painting degree from the University of Science and Culture (USC) in Tehran and an MFA from the University of Regina, SK, Canada in 2020. Currently based in Vancouver, Movahed has exhibited her work nationally, internationally and is a recipient of Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.

This body of work highlights the diversity, beauty, importance and plight of northern Saskatchewan muskegs, land that is being threatened with strip mining. Peat mining involves draining the water out of the muskeg then mulch the cover vegetation (sundews, pitcher plants, Labrador tea, black spruce, birch, willows, alders, cranberries, bunchberries, cloudberries, bog laurel, leatherleaf, and dozens of species of mosses). Muskegs/peatlands are very old landscapes, it takes 10 years for one centimeter of peat to form. It is important to Vanessa’s culture, and to the survival of traditions and knowledge to keep wild areas intact and undisturbed by resource extraction. Many people are unfamiliar with these areas, and this is Vanessa’s way of bringing the muskeg to the public. Vanessa is a Canadian artist of Woodlands Cree and Norwegian ancestry. She is a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band and her community is nemepith sipihk (Sucker River). She holds her Bachelor of Arts with distinction from the University of Saskatchewan. Vanessa is interested in utilizing memory, tradition and themes of nature in her work. Land conservation and land sovereignty are at the heart of her work, with her painting and beadwork focusing on the richness of the land, and in turn, the threats to the land.

These series of works are an excerpt from a previous exhibition 'TADHANA'. These works explore the views as newcomer’s common concept that "fate brought us here" and the most common Filipino outlook of "bahala na" / "come what may" attitude which is prevalent to anyone. However, this attitude is not only a visible trait for newcomer alone, but these are also actually a day-to-day outlook of everyone just varying on expression and terms. The exhibition aims to finds parallels within culture to create better understanding of each and everyone’s' disposition in life. These bodies of work centres on the ideas of 'fate' while relating it to the quest for hierarchy of the modern society. As we live in a time that is always hungry for accomplishment, results and evidence of success, Patrick wants to elaborate the significance of fate thru commentaries using characters of reimagined folklore of his culture, patterns and juxtaposed imagery in order to give new meaning on how fate will lead us to one’s self discovery and freedom. Patrick Fernandez is a contemporary visual artist who lives and works in Regina, Saskatchewan. A native of Pangasinan, Philippines, his colourful paintings use symbolism and reimagined folklore imagery as a means of storytelling. His works are based on personal experiences that deal with displacement and adaptation, using circumstances as turning points for growth.