Bangor Humanities Day kicks-off on Friday evening (Feb. 2nd) at 6pm with a Humanities Powered by PechaKucha event at COESPACE. Presentations topics will include making a living as an author, medical ethics, the Maine Multi-Cultural Center, Peter Archambault (an artist from Madawaska), wedding perfection hysteria, and bacteriophage.
For the big day (Saturday Feb. 3rd) there are three all day events:
- A student art show (6-8pm Friday and 10am-2pm Saturday) at COESPACE.
- A downtown cultural scavenger hunt with prizes given out at 6pm at UMaine Museum of Art. Locations include all of our host partners as well as the Rock and Art Shop. (See map below.)
- A StoryWalk®* of Kunu’s Basket: a story from Indian Island, a children’s book by local author Lee DeCora Francis that can be found in the windows of 15 downtown businesses. The title page is at the UMMA, and the first pages are at Bagel Central, wraps up to Fork and Spoon, and ends at Epic Sports. (See map below.)
Scheduled programming for the 2018 Bangor Humanities Day kicks starts at 11am at the Maine Discovery Museum where the Bangor Symphony Youth Orchestra will be performing a concert and then holding a petting zoo, where young ones interested in checking out the instruments can do so with the help of BSYO members.
Our co-sponsor Bangor Public Library is hosting the following three programmed activities in the early afternoon:
- At 12:15pm, come enjoy the music of a local Celtic Quartet performing Irish and Scottish tunes and songs. Pauleena MacDougall on fiddle, Nancy Neff on accordion, Cathy Segee on flute and whistle, and Daryne Rockett on harp. Performance in the Atrium.
- At 1:15, check out the Grant Workshop: an informal panel designed to help cultural workers in the arts and humanities to learn about the broad range of grants that are available to provide financial support for public cultural programs. Representatives from the Maine Humanities Council and the Bangor Commission on Cultural Development will discuss their grant programs, will provide tips on what makes a winning application, and will answer audience questions. Located in Crofutt Room.
- Finally at 2:15, head over to the Oral History Workshop. Ever wanted to record family or community stories but not sure how to go about it? Join folklore archivist Katrina Wynn and learn the basics of doing oral history recordings. Then starting at 3pm Katrina will be demonstrating by collecting stories from anyone in the community who’d like to contribute from the prompt: “What habit, acquisition, or event made you feel like you had become an adult?“. Located in Business Center.
3:15 sees programming heading over to Nocturnem Draft Haus, where the focus shifts back to performance with The Happening Series Poetry & Prose Reading. The Happening Series “are multi-disciplinary, genre-fluid, and collaborative creative events, curated and facilitated by students at UMaine and (typically) hosted by the Franco-American Centre. We look to provide a space for dynamic creative performances: writers, dancers, visual artists, musicians, actors, workshop leaders, community engagers, scholars and everything outside and in-between. Our events are as dynamic as the content presented – one night might consist of a poetry reading in tandem with a print installation piece, another might look like an integrated music/drama performance, and yet another might explore a social engagement workshop.”
At 5:30, the day wraps up at UMaine Museum of Art with art & hors d’oeuvres (by Basil Creek catering) and a cash bar. UMMA director George Kinghorn will be giving tours of the gallery’s new collections. In addition, the cultural scavenger hunt prize drawing (including two tickets to a Penobscot Theatre show, a gift certificate for The Rock and Art Shop, and copies of the children’s book Kunu’s Basket: a story from Indian Island by Lee DeCora Francis) will be held at 6pm.
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*The StoryWalk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. Storywalk® is a registered service mark owned by Ms. Ferguson.