This time it’s all about arts and culture with a series of BC Spirit Festivals scheduled for next February.

Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Stephanie Cadieux announced the handout this week.

“As proud hosts of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, B.C. welcomed the world to share our vibrant culture, our special sense of place, our spirit of enterprise and optimism,” she said. “By giving expression to the unique spirit of British Columbia, locally based artists and arts organizations will use their creative energy to help communities celebrate in their own way.”

Minister for Community, Sport and Cultural Development Stephanie Cadieux announced today that to commemorate the provinces’ 2010 Olympic success, 49- communities will share just over a million dollars.

The money is going to local arts and cultural organizations throughout the province to help communities celebrate in their own way.

According to a news release, $1,077,224 will be dispersed to local arts councils, First Nations groups, and arts associations. The grants range from $2,000 each to the Chetwynd Community Arts Council Society and the Nicola Valley Community Arts Council, to $50,000 each to the Burnaby Arts Council; the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan; the Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows Arts Council; the Arts Council of Surrey; and La Societe Francophone de Victoria. The only group in Vancouver to receive funding was the francophone Conseil Culturel et Artistique, which got $13,600.

The grants mark the first significant arts-funding announcement by new Minister for Community, Sport, and Cultural Development Stephanie Cadieux, who stated: “By giving expression to the unique spirit of British Columbia, locally based artists and arts organizations will use their creative energy to help communities celebrate in their own way.”

See also: BC community arts groups to get $1-m for Spirit Festivals

The festival, a non-profit society, welcomes teachers and their performing students of any experience level to participate in this month-long festival held in Courtenay at the Sid Williams Theatre.

More than 1,000 performers from Vancouver Island are expected to perform and be adjudicated in the Comox Valley, NIFPA publicist Deidre Knudson said.

The three-year pilot will fund a maximum of $250,000 annually in grants to Burnaby-based non-profit groups, said a city staff report.

Applicants will have to demonstrate proof of additional funding sources as well as partnerships and community involvement.

Grant money awarded may be used for programming, administration and marketing, but not for capital works, equipment or events held outside Burnaby.

For the Crawl, artist tidy their studios, sweep away the sawdust, scrape away the clay and present their work in a finished state, with usually just a few clues as to how the pieces unfolded. But the work you see is the result of untold hours of focused work and countless moments of problem solving: hitting a wall and persevering, and often of large financial investment. Of course, finished work is what we are striving for but for many artists, the process is where the “art” actually lies. Everyone else gets just part of the story in the form of the final piece.

The Vancouver Latin American Film Festival is holding its annual fundraiser, A Night of Film, Music, and Wine, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (November 17) at Granville 7 Cinemas (855 Granville Street). A screening of Mercedes Sosa Cantora, un Viaje Intimo ( Cantora, An Intimate Journey ), a documentary about the acclaimed recording artist, will be embellished with wine, hors d’oeuvres, door prizes, and live music by Latin guitarists Joaquin Ernesto and Pancho y Sal. Tickets are $20, available at www.vlaff.org.

There was a time when the five-day movie bash in the mountains had to make do with leftovers that didn’t make the cut at the earlier fall festivals.

This year, the festival opens Dec. 1 with Daydream Nation, a black-comic small-town story filmed in Fort Langley starring Kat Dennings, Andie MacDowell and Josh Lucas, and written and directed by Toronto’s Michael Goldbach, who is heading to Whistler.

Among the more boundary-pushing works on the program of 17 main shows: La Marea, a coproduction that brings performances to the street corners and store windows of Gastown; Iqaluit the Belgian troupe Berlin’s evocation of the northern city, complete with a metal igloo in the Woodward’s Atrium; and Australia’s Circa, a circus show with multimedia projections.

A traditional annual Hindu holiday, Diwali is a festival of lights where celebrants tend to don new, bright clothes and enjoy sumptuous sweets and snacks.

A week of citywide community arts and culture workshops starts Tuesday and culminates with a huge celebration Sunday afternoon at the Roundhouse Community Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews).

For six straight hours, the Yaletown venue will be home to 70 artists and numerous vendors.

But there are also poets, painters and patrons of the arts in the mix. And spend some time chatting with residents in the area’s animated streets and you’ll discover a tenacious camaraderie unmatched in the Lower Mainland.

Celebrating that community’s culture, heritage and distinct character, the seventh annual Heart of the City Festival – running from today to Nov. 7 — features 80 events at more than 25 venues throughout the neighbourhood. Festival artistic producer Terry Hunter likens it to an open house. And if that makes him a de facto sales agent, well, he knows every nook and cranny: as a DTES [Downtown Eastside] resident and executive director of the Vancouver Moving Theatre, Hunter has lived and worked in the area since 1975.

Local artists will be announced at a later date. Tickets go on sale Nov. 1 and there are a variety of workshops involving the themes of racism, diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion in music. Listen to a sample of music at www.coldsnapfestival.com.

The Island Celtic Festival, which started on Hornby Island years ago and now travels to other Island communities is coming to Ladysmith in 2011.

“I offered this year to do it here,” said Bryan Henderson, a local artist who also has an interest in Celtic music. “I think we have the infrastructure and the support to pull off a good Celtic festival.”

The event starts on a Friday evening April 29, 2011.

“People just play tunes,” said Henderson, in presenting information about the festival to Ladysmith town council Oct. 18. “The next day we are arranging for workshops all day long.”

As festival board chair Paul Dumontet said in a recent email to supporters, “Over the past 12 months, we have developed a new vision for the Children’s Festival that we believe will restore our position as one of the world’s leading events for young people.

“Sadly, over that same period of time, our government funding has been slashed by some $200,000, creating a serious cash flow problem that threatens our ability to implement our new vision. We need an influx of cash and we need it now.”

Organizers received positive feedback from participants who were pleased with the intimacy of the festival, the calibre of the guest authors, the variety of the sessions offered for writers and readers, the practical nature of the workshops provided, and the organization of the events. Even the guest authors seemed impressed.