The CKXU Radio Society will proudly celebrate Love & Records 2012 on Saturday September 15th; Southern Alberta's only music collectors fair!

This outdoor event will run from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. in Downtown Lethbridge at Galt Gardens. Vendors from all over Alberta will be on site selling a large assortment of music in different genres and formats. The event will feature thousands of vinyl records, compact discs, tapes and much more music-related merchandise will all be on sale for music lovers young and old.

Lethbridge based DJ crew and party production company; BassWorks Entertainment will be hosting the first Lethbridge Electronic Music Festival on August 18 at Galt Gardens Park, located in downtown Lethbridge.

LEMF is designed to showcase local Lethbridge and regional EDM artists, in a family friendly environment celebrating the electronic dance music culture and promoting downtown Lethbridge.

On July 24 a group of 35 high school girls from Japan will be arriving in Lethbridge. The girls will be attending ESL classes each morning and exploring the city each afternoon. During the evenings and weekends they will be staying with host families who are able to show their guests true Lethbridge hospitality.

Currently 10 more families are needed to host the girls, aged 16 and 17. Being a homestay family is a great opportunity to create lifelong friendships, learn new customs and have fun. Homestay families will also receive $360 in compensation.

Those interested should contact Cindy Hemmerling by Monday, July 9. Cindy can be contacted by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone 403-892-1992.

For more information about homestay families click here.

While this is the first time the Deathbridge Derby Dames roller derby team have faced the DAMNsels of Distress, some of their members will be very familiar to the team.

"When skaters move, they often join a league in their area quickly, which is the case for DAMNsel skater Kendra Borgen, aka Elizabeth Mayhem," says league president Heather Zarichney.

Young Blood for Life is a student-led challenge designed to increase blood donations and first-time donors among students age 17 and over. Collectively, students across the country donated 18,339 units of blood. A total of 6,873 new donors gave blood within the campaign period. Students recruited teachers, friends and family to donate on behalf of their school. The targets for both blood collections and new donors were exceeded this year, at 154 per cent and 127 per cent respectively.

The City of Lethbridge's Canada Day committee is seeking volunteers to help out on Sunday July 1 during the annual Canada Day celebrations at Henderson Lake and Galt Gardens.

Volunteers at Henderson Lake will assist with roving the site to be information ambassadors to the public, and if they note any concerns, report to the organizers. Volunteers at Galt Gardens assist with handing out Canada Day promotional materials, such as flags, to those in attendance. In both venues volunteers are able to enjoy the sights and sounds of the festivities while helping making the day special for those in attendance.

The City of Lethbridge, Nord-Bridge Seniors and Lethbridge Elder Abuse Response Network (LEARN), are partnering to host an elder abuse awareness event on June 15 in recognition of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. The day recognizes the mistreatment of older adults and highlights the need for appropriate action and prevention efforts.

The producers of Common Chord, a feature-length motion picture set to begin shooting May 28, will be holding a casting call searching for individuals to be featured background performers and extras in this family drama.

For the first time, Lethbridge will be hosting the Pacific Northwest Shrine Association's annual conference in 2013. From July 24–27, over 400 nobles and their spouses are expected to take part in this event. Delegates will be travelling from across Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and the Northwestern United States.

And you thought your family was mixed up! After a realization at a family reunion, filmmaker Jeff Chiba Stearns embarks on a journey of self-discovery to find out why everyone after his grandparents' generation in his Japanese-Canadian family married interracially. The resulting award-winning feature documentary, One Big Hapa Family will be shown at the Galt Museum & Archives on Tuesday, January 24 at 7:30 pm in partnership with the Nikkei Cultural Society of Lethbridge & Area, with Chiba Stearns in attendance

"One Big Hapa Family challenges our perceptions of purity and makes us question if mixing is the end of multiculturalism as we know it", says Stearns of his 58-minute documentary which premiered at festivals internationally in 2010.

One Big Hapa Family explores why almost 100% of all Japanese-Canadians, the highest out of any other ethnicity in Canada, are marrying interracially and how their mixed children perceive their unique multiracial identities. Stories from four generations of a Japanese-Canadian family come to life through the use of innovative animation techniques created by some of Canada's brightest independent animators, including Jeff Chiba Stearns, Louise Johnson, Ben Meinhardt, Todd Ramsay, Jonathan Ng, and Kunal Sen.

Kunal Sen's excerpt from One Big Hapa Family, as well as a 3-minute animation specific to southern Alberta commissioned from Sen, will be included in the Virtual Museum of Canada exhibit Nikkei Tapestry, currently being developed by the Galt Museum & Archives in partnership with the Canadian Heritage Information Network, Nikkei Cultural Society of Lethbridge & Area, the University of Lethbridge Departments of Music and New Media, and Ecole Agnes Davidson School. The site will be completed in the late fall of 2012.

Jeff Chiba Stearns will introduce One Big Hapa Family at the Galt Museum and will answer questions following the screening. Admission is free. Chiba Stearns will also speak at the University of Lethbridge Art Now lecture series on Wednesday, January 25 from noon- 12:50 pm in the Recital Hall.

Jeff Chiba Stearns is a multi award-winning independent documentary and animation filmmaker from Kelowna and now Vancouver, B.C., of Japanese and European heritage. A graduate of the Film Animation program at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, he founded Meditating Bunny Studio Inc., specializing in animation and documentary films along with broadcast and viral commercials for such clients as 3M, Sharpie, and Generali. His films have screened at hundreds of film festivals around the world, garnered 32 awards including the Prix du Public at the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, and broadcast internationally. In 2010, he was awarded the Emily Award from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design for outstanding achievements of an alumnus. Chiba Stearns was awarded the Cultural Pioneer Award by Harvard University in 2011 for his continued exploration of multiethnic identity in his work. He has also instructed college animation, written articles for national publications and lectured around the world on topics of multiracial identity, cultural awareness, filmmaking, short film distribution, and animation.

For information on other exhibits, events and programs, visit www.galtmuseum.com, call 403.320-3954, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.