A growing community asset

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

It’s one of those things you can’t really pinpoint.

There’s concerts mingling with community engagement, art tours running behind the dancing and everyone from politicians to pre-schoolers sharing the same floor.

And it’s all under one roof, in one night.

It’s RMG Fridays.

On the first Friday of every month for the past five years, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery has been opening its doors and playing host to Oshawa’s growing arts and culture community of all ages, and now is looking to celebrate that anniversary on Feb. 5, and what these nights have done for Oshawa.

“What we do here at RMG Fridays is so much bigger than this building,” says Carla Sinclair, the gallery’s manager of community and volunteer development. “It’s about connecting not just individuals…bringing all of these different elements together in our region is helping other businesses.”

Over the last five years, the event has involved 78 community partners, including Feed the Need Durham, Durham College, UOIT, Trent University and Broken Arts Fest.

When the event opened five years ago for the first ever RMG Fridays, 73 people walked through the door. Currently, the event brings in an average of 150 to 200 people each night and they come from all walks of life.

“I think the idea behind RMG Fridays, initially, was to attract millennials and to get them into the gallery,” says Donna Raetsen-Kemp, the gallery’s CEO. “This really interesting thing happened, that it transitioned to being this coming together of all ages. That’s been the magic that kind of came out of it,” she says.

Part of this success came from the elimination of what Sam Mogelonsky, the RMG’s manager of marketing and communications, calls “the aura of reverence” that surrounds art galleries. By getting rid of that prim and proper image that can hang around a gallery, replacing it with the image of having a drink and enjoying music, the RMG has broken down some serious barriers, she says.

“I think it’s given us a much greater reach into places that we would never have been able to tap into before and I think that it’s put a different face on what art galleries are.”

The five-year anniversary party will kick off at 7 p.m. on Feb. 5 and will include performances from Whitby indie-folk artist Annie Sumi and exploratory percussion from Jamie Drake. As well, there will be a performance from the O’Neill Senior Dance Ensemble and a live painting work from JR Hunter.

The night will also include a first for Ontario as New York-based tour group Museum Hack will be on hand to give guided tours of the gallery. The renowned group are known for its “non-traditional” tours that aim for entertainment value and may be a little rough around the edges.