The new cultural coordinator at the City of Thompson under the City's Department of Recreation, Parks and Culture is looking to draw on his experiences in places like California, Hawaii, England, New York and Jamaica and his background in digital multimedia technology to bring a fresh perspective to the city's events and festivities.
Chris Sharpe, a 30 year-old graduate from Red River College who also studied art at the University of Manitoba, has been living in Thompson for two months now and has been working at the City for about two weeks.
Sharpe was born in London, Ontario and was living in Winnipeg for his schooling. He says he's excited to be in Thompson and decided to move his family up here because of the opportunities the city has to offer.
"Thompson is pretty much a growing city, recession proofI find the community to be very open. Everyone's pretty nice and there's lots of room for growth, definitely," he explains. "It's a very multicultural group of people. For myself, being Jamaican Canadian first generation, it's just fabulous to see the diversity here."
Sharpe is also very excited about his role as cultural coordinator with the City, in which he will put on different workshops and exhibitions and coordinate events such as Canada Day, Winterfest, the Concerts in the Park series and other festivals and celebrations.
"There's lots of room for growth and expansion, and they're allowing me to be creative and kind of take it to the next level, I guess, when it comes to advertising, promotions and art," he says. "I actually like doing events and it's kind of one of my favourite things to do. At Red River they taught us a whole bunch of things like video productionso I can do film and television and what not, plus graphic design, so adding that to the events I think is essential to taking Thompson's recreation to the next level."
Sharpe says he's looking forward to working with other people at the City of Thompson and learning from their experience.
His wife currently works as a nurse with the retinal screening program at the Burntwood Regional Health Authority. The couple also is looking forward to spending time doing outdoor activities in Thompson with their two children, aged one and two years old.