The city of Santa Clarita’s Celebrate event series returned on Friday, kicking off the spread of cultural knowledge with Egypt.
Celebrate is an event series put on by the city aimed toward promoting a greater understanding of cultural diversity within the city through arts, crafts and activities.
Beginning in April and ending Sept. 8, the event series takes place every second Friday of the month at the Canyon Country Community Center.
“You really kind of feel like you get to transport to that country just coming to the Canyon Country Community Center,” said Events Coordinator Mike Franke.
Franke said that the city has received lots of positive feedback from the community about the event series. This feedback inspired the city to make more efforts toward expanding the event from a family-friendly focus, to include a wider age group by adding a beer garden.
Friday’s Celebrate celebrated Egypt’s culture.
“We’ve spoke with some of our Egyptian partners as well to kind of show what to showcase in terms of activities,” said Franke. “We really want to highlight, obviously there’s some activities here as ancient Egypt that we are showing with our experiences, but we also showcase some more of the modern Egypt stuff.”
Throughout the community center, attendees could participate in pyramid building, perfume making, hieroglyphic writing and mummification.
Candace Yang, a parent attendee, and the rest of her family attended almost every single Celebrate event last year.
Yang homeschools her children and found this event series a great way to further what they had been learning at home about different countries.
“This is perfect, I’m counting it as school, social studies,” said Yang. “The whole experience is very absorbing, it’s an immersive experience.”
The event also featured Egyptian folkloric dance and drumming by the Sahlala Dancers, and Egyptian street food and traditional cuisine.
“I think it’s really impactful for the community to learn about different cultures,” said volunteer Sehaj Kaur.
To view the upcoming schedule of future Celebrate events, visit bit.ly/3oqX9oQ.
