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The Grand Gala looks to raise funds for Vantage Community Services

Aug 16, 2017 | 9:22 PM

A unique event is coming to Red Deer on September 15, hosted by Vantage Community Services.

The Grand Gala will be held in the Marquis Room at Westerner Park.

Morgan Day, marketing coordinator with Vantage Community Services said it’s going to be a glitzy evening.

“It will be a night filled with progressive art, design culture, acrobat performers, red carpet, photographers, a best dressed contest, champagne reception, music entertainment, delicious food, and dancing,” said Day.

The focus on arts and culture stems from the successes of art as communication and therapy amongst Vantage Community Services’ clients.

“We do try to integrate art and culture in a lot of our therapeutic practices,” Day added. “We find art is a very good therapeutic practice to help kids open up or even youth open up if they’re having troubles communicating.”

Vantage Community Services also sees a lot of First Nations clients, and Day said their First Nations support worker strives to help these clients stay to their culture as well.

Funds raised during the Grand Gala will go to Vantage Community Services, and attendees will receive a charitable deduction receipt for their ticket purchase as well.

“We are a non-profit organization in mental health and human services. We are fundraising to open up our programs,” said Day.

Opening up the programs will hopefully entail having more focus group counselling services available for grief counselling for youth as well as adding different therapeutic based programs open to the public at little to no cost.

Mental health and art are a great pair, according to Day. The idea for the Grand Gala came to her after spending some time in Calgary and seeing how arts and culture can tie in with mental health. Her goal was to bring something to Red Deer that was a more “forward” type of event.

“We use art a lot. We have art in the park with our homeless youth and there is tons of artwork from our homeless [at Street Ties] that leave it here for them to revisit years later because they have no homestead.”

She added that while they don’t provide true art therapy, many of the counselling practices use art to help kids in the group homes, mental health treatment center and counselling programs to open up and find effective methods of communication.

“It becomes a constructive habit for them and it’s a different world for them to escape to.”

The Grand Gala looks to showcase all different forms of art for people to both interact with and even take photos with.

“Everywhere there’s going to be live art models walking around and you’ll want pictures with them, and you’ll be seeing these acrobats and you’ll want pictures of them, and then there’ll be a few art installations that you can take pictures with kind of like photo booths.”

The event starts at 6 p.m. on September 15th with dinner at 7 p.m. and is a formal attire event. Tickets are $120, or a table of 8 can be purchased for $840. They can be purchased at www.thegrandgala2017.info.