On September 24th, 2010, Culture Days kicks off in Canada for the first time in history. As the largest-ever collective public participation campaign undertaken by the arts and cultural community in Canada, Culture Days is a free three-day celebration of Canadian arts and culture at every level: From the local woodworker to the established arts organization, Culture Days will unite the nation to honour the diversity of our creativity in every community.

Culture Days is currently looking for more individual artists, cultural groups, organizations, municipalities and festivals to join the movement and register free interactive arts and cultural activities. To register an activity as part of Culture Days in your community, visit www.culturedays.ca today to get involved.

Inspiring activities already planned to take place across Canada in hundreds of communities this September include:

• Richmond, British Columbia – Freestyle Chinese Brush Painting Workshop with award-winning artist Ming Yeung
• Winnipeg, Manitoba – Traveling Animation Station will get children and parents excited about the power of animation and film as they build plasticine characters, take a series of digital photos and edit them into a short animated movie clip
• Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - Kids’ Junk Jam II hosted by The ReARTcyle Group Inc. invites kids of all ages to discover the wonders of nature, recycling and making music by constructing instruments made from found materials and rocking out
• Waterloo, Ontario – Sing with KW Glee invites the public to meet its members and learn how to recreate the pop choir sound
• Guelph, Ontario – Late-night Lantern Tour at MacDonald Steward Art Centre brings the nationally renowned Sculpture Park to life with ghost stories and legends
• St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador – Dramaturgy Workshop and script reading with four professional actors is a great opportunity for budding screenwriters and actors to discover how a play develops before it hits the stage

Québec’s annual Journées de la culture event, established in 1997, inspired the initiation of Culture Days and will be part of the annual celebration, as will Alberta Arts Days which launched in 2008 and helped spur on the national movement. Alberta Arts days takes place from September 17 – 19. Come September 2010, Canada will come together as one cultural community in this vast inaugural celebration.

“We are thrilled with the level of enthusiasm that Culture Days has already begun to garner across Canada. Thousands of artists, organizations, associations and public and private funders across the country are excited to support and voluntarily participate in this collective invitation,” says Antoni Cimolino, Chair of Culture Days’ national Steering Committee and General Director of Stratford Shakespeare Festival. “We hope that Canadians in communities across Canada will join the Culture Days movement and accept our collective invitation to join us in our cultural homes and become more familiar with what we do.