Yesterday was day one of the Southeastern Manitoba Festival.

Because of the pandemic, the festival was cut short in 2020 and then never happened in 2021. But, President Sharon Guenther says they have a plan in place for this year's event.

Guenther explains the entire event will take place at the Steinbach Arts Centre. It kicked off on Monday with the junior piano discipline.

One of the changes for this year's event is that the Festival will only be allowing 25 people in the performance room at a time. Guenther says if there are 10 performers in a class, this will allow each of them to bring a parent or spectator. Then on top of that, there could be a few accompanists, the adjudicator and adjudicator secretary.

"It's a larger room so we can separate everybody," says Guenther. "And it will work very well I think."

Guenther says they are encouraging parents to videotape their children performing and then send those videos to family and friends and also post to the Festival's social media. Guenther says if each parent would post one video, they could have 400 videos of this year's performers.

Meanwhile, Guenther says the Festival's executive is quite encouraged by the number of entries this year. She notes it will not be as big as in years past, but the event will still run for more than four weeks. The schedule is as follows:

  • February 28 to March 3: Junior Piano
  • March 5: Strings/Instrumental
  • March 7 to 9: Vocal
  • March 14 to 16: Senior Piano
  • March 21 to 22: Speech/Theatre Arts
  • March 21 to 22: Choral
  • March 23 to 24: Musical Theatre
  • There will be no Dance Festival, Guitar Festival or Gala in 2022.

Guenther says there is a lot of enthusiasm for this year's event. She notes parents are thrilled to hear their children singing again, and so too are teachers.

"We're very excited because we want to give the people an opportunity to have a goal to work towards," she adds. "To have a place to show people what they've learned and also to learn some more from the adjudicators and to be encouraged and to encourage the arts in our community."