Prairie Fusion Arts & Entertainment has been holding several virtual live-stream events, and their first free concert is taking place Friday night.

Virtual Programming Coordinator Dee Harder says all the virtual events are free

"This is part of our Prairie Fusion Home series. It's quite an exciting series that includes a number of free concerts. I think we have four altogether. And if you go on prairiefusion.ca, you'll see an amazing calendar of events that we have and these are all free to the public. Just come in and sign up on our website and enjoy our programming."

"This is the first concert. We've been running a series of classes, dance classes and paint night. And we had a local artist come in and show us how to make baby moccasins. We're doing beaded keychains. On Louis Riel Day, we have a jigger coming in who's going to give us a jigging demonstration. We also have a Dakota elder coming in to do some storytelling for us. So, it's kind of a wonderful 10-week program that we're doing to bring some interesting at-home programming to our community."

The concert Friday is with Fireball Paul Shepherd and Terry Human for their first concert, and then on the 19th it's pianist Gareth Rice. Harder says March will see two more concerts including Charlie and Mavis Brennan coming in on the 5th.

If you'd like to get in on the free concert, you have to go to their website and follow the process. It might make you think you are paying for it, but it's actually free, and you have to follow the procedure to register and complete the checkout forms. Harder explains it's for the sake of required numbers of those who will tune in.

"We have been selling-out almost every night for every event that we've put on so far," adds Harder. "In some cases, we need to give out kits for moccasins--you know, the leather, the needles and whatever they needed the pattern to make them. So, we've had to put a limit on some of the events, but of course, with the concert, that's wide open. People can just tune in and enjoy. This is our Home Fusion series, so it's an amazing opportunity to get a bit of a smorgasbord of classes, events and different things that we haven't tried before to see what the uptake is from the community. And I'll tell you, these things are going to be offering in ways that we haven't before because of the popularity of some of the classes."