Silver Skate Festival

The Cause

The Silver Skate Festival is a 10-Day celebration that invites visitors to experience the beauty and diversity of winter programming in Edmonton. Celebrating 31 years in 2021, Silver Skate Festival represents Edmonton's diverse multicultural community and embraces winter as a positive feature of our Northern lifestyle. The festival site, picturesque William Hawrelak Park, is transformed into a community hub for visitors to explore, with a sprawling 68-hectare park and a 5-hectare skating pond. With the park as a blank canvas, the festival activates a large footprint of the park to feature its arts, culture, sport, and recreational programming. The development and celebration of art is an integral part of Silver Skate Festival, as we strive to bring many different forms of art into the outdoor winter world. Silver Skate Festival offers fire sculptures, snow sculptures, film showings, and live music by local performers. Silver Skate Festival also looks at ways for people to reconnect with their heritage roots, so the aspect of heritage and culture is very important. One of the ways we celebrate this is with the Heritage Village, a program that educates visitors on Canadian culture, with an emphasis on Indigenous heritage. Another essential factor in Silver Skate Festival's programming is the inclusion of family-friendly events, and promoting the education of youth. We offer a school program called Snow Daze in which schools can bring in their students for an entire day of winter activities - including participation in winter sports and learning about Canadian heritage and culture. Outside of the school program, most of our festival programming is accessible by people of all ages, creating an interactive and enjoyable atmosphere for all.

With the COVID-19 Pandemic the Silver Skate festival is re imagining how we can deliver innovative and creative programming for February 2021. We are proposing for this project for Field Law to support the creation of outdoor art installation for the duration of Silver Skate Festival, possibly longer. Our idea is to engage a local Edmonton Artist or Artist Collective to create a temporary Art Installation that celebrates our Winter City for the public to enjoy. This installation would be placed in either or home in Hawrelak Park or alternatively somewhere else in the city. Quite possibly in a close location to Field Law with Signage celebrating our Winter City, the Installation and our incredible partner.

Who Will it Benefit?

Our Arts Community has been impacted severely by the COVID-19 pandemic. This project will directly benefit the Artist or Artist Collective that creates the body of the work. This body of work will become the property of the Silver Skate Festival and will be continued to be used for years to come. The general public will directly benefit from the opportunity to get outside and explore parts of our beautiful city and our winter season. You, our partner will benefit from the good will created in our incredible Edmonton Community.