Prismatic Arts Festival just announced its 2016 line-up, and it’s killer. For the first time, the multi-genre fest is featuring exclusively female artists and cultural workers.
Plus, after two years at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth, the festival is returning to downtown Halifax from September 21-25.
This sixth edition of the festival focuses on showcasing Indigenous and culturally diverse artistic acts, such as performance, music, film, poetry and dance. Prismatic will feature many local acts including Halifax poet laureate Rebecca Thomas, filmmaker, writer and educator Sylvia Hamilton, and musician Reeny Smith. It will also attract national and international performers like Equadorian rocker Eljuri and Albertian aboriginal cellist/composer Cris Derksen. And there’s so, so many more.
Prismatic is also hosting an interactive conference which is open to the public. It’ll be a chance for artists, audience members, academics and whomever else to engage in various discussions on the theme “bridging the gap.”
There are daily performances scheduled, and many of them are FREE! Could this get any better? Shows happen at various locations—including The Bus Stop Theatre, The Company House, Pier 21 and the Central Library. They’re family-friendly, and open to all. Prices and info about ticketed performances are still to come.
Check out their full line up here.
This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2016.
I thought that diversity was something we should all be striving for. Not in 2015+1 I guess.
Pathetic. Sexist and exclusionary is never good no matter what gender is being effected. It’s even more disgusting how the writer of this seems oozing with joy at the blatant sexist discrimination, using phrases like “it’s a killer”. Yeah, an equality and fairness killer. And then there’s “could this get any better?” Well actually yes, you could include men too and stop being exclusionary aholes.
And once again you see this brainless pandering to only women. So why not have an all native canadian festival the excludes whites? An all gay festival that excludes straights? Would they be such “killer” and “can’t get any better” ideas too? No, let’s just have an all female one that excludes men. This is contemptible and backwards.
Hopefully the organizers behind this abysmal idea will grow at least a modicum of wisdom to realize that discrimination by another name is still discrimination. Take the chips on your shoulders and your grinding axes elsewhere please, like preferably buried far below the Atlantic ocean. It’s insulting and wrong to deny all the talented male artists out there a voice to perform in this. There should be a petition started to ban this year’s festival unless men are included too and issue an apology to all male artists who got bumped. The male artists, , who would have otherwised have performed at this festival should picket and protest it. To male artists: you should NOT supoort something, that does not support you, and that in fact hinders you. Take a hint please and realize how poorly you are being treated and how insulting this is to you. Don’t accept such hostile discrimination against you and your friends, brothers, and fathers.
Ridiculous and twisted in an age when Trudeau is packing his cabinet with half women and with a female US president looming, people somehow yet feel justified to pull stunts like this to exlude men entirely. This kind of thing should be more of an anachronism now than ever before, so how do they seriously justify this? What happened to equality? More like supremacy. Btw, things like this only cause resentment and negative attitudes towards women, ensuring that the vicious circle keeps going. So nice job with that too.
Hopefully some of the female artists who are going to this will have the intelligence, integrity and true sense of egalitarianism to call this disgusting BS out. The only good thing going for this is that it’s such a small no-name festival that it will pass under the radar without anyone knowing about it anyway. Good enough for it. And if they keep pulling ludicrous stunts like this, I hope no one ever knows about it.