Want to see what’s going on in the community? Have an event you would like to see featured on our calendar?
Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism and Kootenay Co-op Radio are excited to announce the launch of the region’s most comprehensive online events guide, the Kootenay Calendar.
Kootenay Calendar features a full line up of live performances, markets, festivals, films, workshops, sports, wellness, galleries, exhibitions, and food & beverage specials for locals and visitors.
As part of Kootenay Co-op Radio’s new website launch and re-brand, it has teamed up with Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism (NKLT) on an already-popular events and community calendar.
The Kootenay Calendar will feature event listings encompassing live music, visual and theatre arts, gallery openings, festivals and film showings, non-profit, community and outdoor adventure events around Kootenay Lake, Nelson, Kaslo, East Shore, the Slocan Valley to Nakusp, Castlegar, Rossland and Trail. You can even add your own events, in English or French, for free.
The original Calendar was established in 2011 by NKLT, the local destination marketing organization, that represents over 200 tourism businesses and organizations, and promotes all there is to do across the Kootenay Lake region to potential travellers.
“Because we market to visitors directly, we reach over 30,000 people monthly through our website and social channels. A lot of locals follow us too to find what to do with visiting friends and family,” says NKLT Executive Director Dianna Ducs. “The events calendar has been the most visited page on our website, and is now hosted on KCR, a community run media network!”
Ducs says the partnership with Kootenay Co-op Radio is a perfect fit enhancing the promotion of regional events and making it easy for organizations to post events and share. NKLT is proud to partner with KCR on this valuable calendar asset.
“We’re two distinctly Kootenay non-profit organizations working together to support one another, the same local communities, their cultural sectors and their economies — by providing a robust, well-populated calendar of things to do whether you’re from here or abroad.”
The Nelson & Kootenay Lake Tourism site has shifted its daily events calendar to KCR’s Kootenay Calendar, www.kootenaycoopradio.com/events/ but NKLT still hosts an Annual Events Listing www.nelsonkootenaylake.com/calendar to make it easy to see in a snapshot the annual events that are key draws to the region.
“The West Kootenay is an internationally recognized destination for arts and culture venues, with so many festivals and a lot of nonprofits too, and all of them enrich the Kootenays,” says KCR Sponsorship and Membership Coordinator Amélie Sauquet, “but having worked with so many of them over the last 23 years, and being a non-profit ourselves, we know that promoting events can be difficult.”
Organizations often don’t have the resources to reach all the people who’d be interested in their events, Sauquet adds, or they end up having to reach out at the last minute.
“But Kootenay Co-op Radio reaches across the region to a population of over 50,000, we broadcast everywhere on-line through our new site, and we’re supported by over 4,700 members.”
Kootenay Calendar listings will include links to the events themselves, and also to the venues, businesses and organizations that host them.
KCR Operations and Programming Manager Ed Zych says the station is working hard to be the region’s hub for arts, culture and genuinely local information.
“Kootenay Co-op Radio has been member-owned and volunteer-operated from the start since 1999,” says Zych. “And we’re still here for people who not only want to know what’s going on in their community, but to be a part of it, and to contribute.”
