Wide Arts National Association
The mission of the Wide Arts National Association (WANA) is to actively create and deliver a wide array of arts and cultural experiences to foster the health, development, appreciation, understanding, and enrichment of community. WANA presents performing, visual and literary arts and cross-disciplinary opportunities as avenues of education, inclusion and involvement for individuals of all ages and social backgrounds. WANA provides local and visiting artists and specialists with a platform to participate in cultural arts programs and experiences that exemplify and honour commnity spirit and cultural diversity.
Art from the Heart to Lift the Soul
Incorporated in January, 2021, the WIDE ARTS NATIONAL ASSOCIATION is an incorporated not-for-profit action-based society that strives to celebrate and inspire the community through the cultivation, preservation, and presentation of performing, visual and literary arts in a variety of formats.
WANA focuses on community building, inclusive, art-forward events and festivals that support local visual, literary, healing, and performing artists.
WANA reaches out across generations, cultures, genders and abilities to provide accessible platforms to lead, animate, participate in, develop and support Arts and Cultural Programs and Experiences. We believe in honouring the traditions of the past that inform our future and embrace new ideas and approaches that bring together diverse groups of people who can create new approaches to arts and cultural understanding.
WANA believes that they have an obligation to the community to promote collaboration, engage allies, and encourage participation in the creative process as Cultural Animateurs.
Cultural Animateur
The animateur is a community artist who helps people create and celebrate their own culture, drawing freely on the particular aspirations, myths, ethnic or historical heritage that bind them as a community. The animateur is a catalyst and synthesizer, as well as an organizer of work and an imparter of skills. Living and working in the mainstream of community life, the animateur comes to know the community intimately and is accepted as the community’s own.
Animation work, by definition, involves people in a process of channeling their own creative energy toward a common goal. The process, as much as the product, enriches community life and imparts a sense of common identity.
1984, Peter Reynolds on Cultural Animation:
“Just plain folks; building culture— rather than just consuming it.”
“ONE SUCCESS AT A TIME”