ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Aurora Borin. You’re organizing something called Home for the Holidays, which is something of a replacement for the annual Banff Community Christmas Concert. What is Home for the Holidays?

AURORA BORIN: The Community Christmas Concert up at now the Jenny Belzberg Theatre is an annual Banff tradition. The whole town gets together for two nights every year. That show sells out two nights every year. 2000 tickets. This has to happen this year. Back in August I sat down for a glass of wine with Heather Jean Jordan and she and I went, yep, we’re doing this. We are going to provide a live stream concert December 18th. People can watch it from their couches or their phones wherever they are. It’s been a remarkable project. I never would have dreamed it would get as big and honestly, quite as professional as it has gotten. I’m so excited for everybody to hear about it and see it.

RM: You’ve had some good community contributions so far?

AB: We’re getting set design. We’re getting professional camera work done. Heather and I are getting our hair and makeup done because neither one of us knows how to do that for a video camera. The value of what has been provided to this point in terms of time and materials and expertise is over $30,000. That’s all just donated.

RM: Are there still opportunities for the community to be involved in the actual show before it launches?

AB: Absolutely. First of all, if you have a skill that you think could contribute, please reach out. We can involve you somehow if you think you have a way to help out, but we invite everybody to participate in two different ways. First of all, if you’ve been to the Eric Harvie, you know there’s always this big tree reveal. It’s one of the highlights of the show. We thought – what if everybody that wanted to sends in a picture of their decorations or them in front of their decorations, and we put that into a video slide show? It’ll be a little bit like that thing that some people do where you drive by the houses at the holiday time and you look inside and ooh and ahh at the decorations. Now you’re actually invited in. People can send those photos by email. The second thing is we have is Samantha Welsh, who is a very skilled and talented visual artist here in the Bow Valley, providing us colouring templates that you can go onto our website and download. Send those to us too at the same email address and we will put those up on social media as well and show everybody what people are doing. This is all just trying to bring people together and remind people that we’re all doing the same things at the same time, and that even if we can’t see each other we’re still all here and we’re still all neighbours and community members. We hope a lot of people participate.

RM: And this is a fundraiser as well, isn’t it?

AB: It sure is. We’re going to be adding in a fundraising component for the Banff YWCA. They’ve been doing a lot of quarantine, accommodation, and stuff like that on top of all of the normal programs they always do. During the shows we will have a link available for people to go donate whatever they can.

RM: Home for the Holidays – it’s the Banff Community Christmas Concert virtually this year. The live show is on Friday, December 18th at 6 PM, and there’ll be replays on the 20th and the 21st. Is there an online home where people can go to find all this information?

AB: On our website you’ll see a countdown, and when the show actually happens that’s where you’ll go to and the countdown will be replaced with a video.

Follow Home for the Holidays on their Instagram, and RSVP through their Facebook event link.

Filed under: Banff