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Inaugural Muse Awards celebrate Mission’s best

A dozen individual and business recipients attended Mission’s first Muse Awards at Cedarbrooke Chateau last Thursday. RICK RAKE PHOTO
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Kjaer Pedersen accepts her Muse Award for Visual Arts excellence at the Cedarbrooke Chateau last Thursday.

There were close to 100 attendees at the first annual Muse Awards to celebrate cultural and arts achievements in Mission last Thursday at the Cedarbrooke Chateau.

The idea for the awards was to foster ongoing cultural activity in Mission by recognizing its artists and artisans, its visionaries and volunteers, and those engaged in shaping and supporting memorable events.

Mission chose the awards to honour emerging artists and those who support them. The winners: Skye Brooks, a Juno winner earlier this year; Doris Paterson for Literary Arts; Kjaer Pedersen, for Visual Arts; Bruce Klassen with a unique award for his nature photography; the JOOI Club and Samantha Svensk won the Emerging Artist awards.

Gail Brown-Evans won as Educator; Rhett Nicholson got kudos as Individual Arts Advocate; Lifetime Learning Centre Society as Muse-awarded Organization; Holdsworth Lumber won the Small Business Muse, with the line that anyone who needs a "really big piece of wood" can go to Allan; Envision Financial won the Corporate Business Muse Award, and no wonder, after the years of the Twilight Concert Series, which John Taves organized, who won the Lifetime Cultural Contribution Award.

The trophies were designed by Clayburn Copperworks and Candlewood Designs.

The event, emceed by council candidate Pam Alexis, considered what components make a community engaged with its artists, its cultural advocates, citizens and volunteers. The audience was a rapt one; everyone listened. A pin didn't drop, although it might have, from Kjaer Pedersen's clothing exhibits.

The Muse Awards was created by the Cultural Resources Commission.