Within a few months of becoming an official society, Wide Arts National Association (WANA) has already started their first major project in Osoyoos: a mural.

To honour Osoyoos for its 75th anniversary, WANA has joined their efforts with the Rotary Club of Osoyoos to oversee a mural project in the heart of Main Street as a cultural collage of the town.

The team is still in the process of finding an artist who will take on the task, which they are hoping to have completed this summer on the brick wall behind the Fields store.

When they located the wall and met with Fields owner Alex Nunes, there was no convincing, according to Kate Hobin, president of WANA.

“He went off on his own explanation of how valuable (murals) were in his experience travelling through Europe and South America, and he was in,” said Hobin.

Susan Cran of the Rotary Club has worked closely with WANA in helping them obtain the community service grant from the Town of Osoyoos.

“Rotary takes care of looking after the community grant, because [WANA] couldn’t go for it, technically, because they haven’t been an association long enough to apply,” said Cran. “It also met all the requirements in terms of the values that Rotary stands for, and giving back to the community.”

From the community service grant, the society was given $4,000. A large portion of the budget will go towards the artist chosen to paint the mural, a process which will take three to four weeks.

Rotary is also helping organize an upcoming fundraising event called ‘Building Community One Brick at a Time,’ which will go towards the budget.

The idea came from another mural project that was done by the Rotary Club in Port Alberni.

The fundraiser will allow people to buy a brick (or more) from the mural wall as a way to help sponsor the project. They will be announcing a date for the fundraiser and more details once they find an artist and know what the mural will look like.

“Because it’s a cultural montage of the 75-year history, we want to make sure that we incorporate First Nations, Portuguese, and the Indo-Canadian community because those are the three groups that really formed Osoyoos,” Cran said.

Hobin added they want to also showcase the French-Canadian and Hispanic seasonal workers who help harvest fruits every year.

They also want to incorporate the landscape of the region with orchards, vineyards, mountains and lakes.

“It could be [busy], but I’ve seen some murals that are busy. If you start looking, it’s like a puzzle, it’s like Where’s Waldo, you find the little bits here, little bits there. And it means something to everybody without having to identify any one particular person,” said Hobin, “Because this is not a mural about someone . . . this is a mural from 1946 to 2021 [in Osoyoos.]”

“And that represents what our community is,” added Wina Poliquin of WANA.