The Community Arts Council is selling tickets and selling a lifestyle, and it is all Prince George.
The CAC is the umbrella group that supports and promotes arts of all kinds and almost all the other arts groups in the region.
They are headquartered at the Studio 2880 complex where they have a Ticketmaster
office, a gift shop specializing in local arts, a gallery always featuring local artists, an artist-in-residence studio for a different artist each year, plus the working spaces for a number of guilds, office space for a number of arts organizations, and the studios of community radio station CFIS. It's a busy place.
They also operate a number of programs that foster the arts in the community, and hold annual arts-based events like the Spring Arts Bazaar and Studio Fair.
To offset the costs of these programs, events and facilities, the CAC is running an innovative new raffle. It is a fundraiser and a promotions tool in the same act. They are offering a year's worth of arts and culture activities within the local region.
"It represents a holistic adventure into arts and culture in this region," said CAC project co-ordinator Lisa Redpath. "Our local and regional artistic community has so much to offer and here it is - everything from passes to the hugely successful new event Northern FanCon to dependable favourites like tickets to a number of Theatre North West plays and a number of Prince George Symphony Orchestra performances."
There are also some items that might strike the audience as strange in the context of the arts - cross country ski passes for Otway Nordic Centre, passes into Fort St. James Historic Site, three months of family pool passes for the Four Seasons Pool, tickets to the labour council's popular Women's Day Breakfast.
These, said Redpath, were deliberately included to stress the new CAC motto: Art Has No Boundaries.
The grand items on the list include a Ramada Hotel-Prince George weekend staycation, and a P.G. Cougars game from the City of Prince George luxury suite.
The money raised by the raffle goes to the spectrum of services and programs offered by the Community Arts Council. Tickets are $10 available at the gift shop and ticket centre at Studio 2880.
