Welcome to MayWorks 2008.  In the calendar you can check out the highlighted dates to find what events are taking place that day.

April 27 is the first event of this year’s calendar and it will feature a spoken word event with artists from Edmonton, Toronto and Winnipeg. It is a joint project of the MayWorks Festivals in the three cities and is made possible by funding from the Canada Council. It features some of the best young poets from these cities who will be doing work commissioned especially for the show. Here in Winnipeg we are pleased to announce that the University of Winnipeg Students Association and CKUW are also sponsoring the event.

As a pre-MayWorks event on April 4th and 5th the Almanac Festival was held at the West End Cultural Centre. It featured Tom Paxton, Lindsay Jane, Nancy White, Joe Jencks (with Helena Nash). The two nights were a unique opportunity to hear music from across two generations of performers/activists. The Almanac Festival was made possible by a grant from the Winnipeg Arts Council and was sponsored by CUPE – Manitoba.

A marching band at the May Day march, a May Day banquet, an evening of poetry, an art show featuring the work of worker-artists and a spring concert were the activities of the first two weeks. Here are some of the events in pictures.

On April 18th the MayWorks 2007 schedule was premiered in dramatic fashion at the Burton Cummings Theatre. Against a backdrop of projected images, members of the press got a preview of some the events that will be taking place in MayWorks 2007. Ian La Rue performed from the MayWorks event Rock for Rights.

On June 21, 1919 Mike Sokolowski, a Ukrainian immigrant, found himself at the centre of a huge demonstration of strikers in Market Square. Faced with a large and militant demonstration, the Mayor read the riot act and called in troops to quell the uprising. In the riot that followed, Mike Sokolowski was killed instantly by a bullet through the heart. A few days later, a second striker, Steve Skezerbanovicz, died of wounds that had become infected.

The events leading to their deaths began more than one month earlier when at seven o’clock on the morning of May 15, 1919 Winnipeg’s female night shift telephone operators punched off duty. Unlike other days no day shift workers reported to work, in fact, the city’s industry and commerce fell silent as workers began what was to become known as the Winnipeg General Strike. The strike was called by the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council out of sympathy for the city’s building and metal trades workers whose employers would not negotiate with them. The strike lasted more than one month and involved 25,000 workers.

On May 14 a memorial was held at the grave Mike Sokolowski as part of the MayWorks Festival. MayWorks itself was established to commemorate the Winnipeg General Strike through works of art that celebrate the many positive contributions made by working people.