An eco-friendly fête
Campion and Luther to host a week of arts and crafts
Christian Hardy
A&C Editor
Later this month, Campion and Luther are going to look more like an open market than quiet colleges. Tuesday, Nov. 16 will mark the beginning of Campion College’s Market in the Commons and Fair Trade Week at Luther College. Fair Trade Week has been an annual event for some time at Luther College, but this is the second annual Market in the Commons at Campion. I spoke with Apolline Lucyk, the Arts and Fine Arts representative for the Campion College Students’ Union (CCSU), and organizer of Market in the Commons, to learn more about this upcoming event.
Apolline organized the first annual Market in the Commons, and this year she has returned with help from the CCSU, Luther, and the Visual Arts Students Association (VASA).
“It’s a lot of work for me to organize,” Apolline said, “but it’s really fun. I really like it and I think it’s a good event – so I enjoy it.”
The primary challenge for Apolline last year was that no one had ever attempted to put on an event like Market in the Commons at Campion before. “When I had the idea last year everyone [at Campion] said ‘oh yeah, that’s a great idea’ – they didn’t know what I should do to get sellers – but everyone was positive about it. I didn’t know where to find sellers, so first I tried to put up some posters on 13th [Avenue], but I had some help from the [Regina Folk Festival] and then I got in contact with some of the local crafts shows, and through these contacts I got a mass amount of local artisans.”
Apolline got the idea for Market in the Commons from Luther’s Fair Trade Week. “I sort of noticed that Luther had this cool thing they did every once in a while, with fair trade stuff in the halls,” Apolline remarked. “I thought it would be cool to have something nice like [Fair Trade Week] in Campion. I also knew that there’s a lot of people who did arts and crafts around the city, and thought it would be great to give them a venue to sell them at the University.”
When asked if there was a registration fee for the artists, Apolline said that “there is a small registration fee for tables for the artisans,” less than $50, “and all of that money is given to a charity. Last year it was the Marian Centre and this year it’s going to be Chili for Children.
They give hot lunches to a variety of different schools around [the downtown] area.” The money from the table registration fees go towards Chili for Children, and the organizers will also be accepting donations to the charity, but the local artists get to keep what they make from the sale of their artwork. The money raised by Luther College’s Fair Trade Week goes towards Lutheran World Relief.
The Market in the Commons and Fair Trade Week represents not only an opportunity to give to a local charity, or for artists and local craftspeople to sell their wares, but also for visual arts students to sell and showcase their artwork.
“My hope was that student artists could have more chances to sell their work,” Apolline said. “VASA is taking three tables, and they’re gonna have stuff from six disciplines of art. So there’s lots of different kinds of art from them,” says Apolline.
The weeklong fête in Campion and Luther will give students “the chance to buy cool, eco-friendly, or locally-made stuff,” and it will also “give them an opportunity to see some of the art that is going on around” at the U of R. Students are also welcome to sell their own crafts or artwork. Apolline would like to stress that Campion’s Market in the Commons “is open to anyone who wants to sell crafts. They could contact me and we have a table from Campion that people can sell their stuff through, as well as if they were a visual arts student they could talk to VASA and get on one of their tables.”
The Market in the Commons and Fair Trade Week at Luther and Campion will be be open to students from Tuesday, Nov. 16 to Friday, Nov. 19. Each day will feature a different group of artists and a variety of crafts, clothing, art, and confections, and so students are encouraged to attend each day in order to experience all that the fête has to offer.