Twenty five years ago, I bet we were all watching Top Gun and wondering if Oprah was ever going to make it. Sports fans watched the Mets win the World Series (do you remember Bill Buckner?) and millions of Americans lined up for Hands Across America.

Al Capone’s vault was opened (spoiler alert … nothing was in it), Pixar opened its now-famous animation studios and we saw Halley’s Comet. And closer to home, the Friends of Medalta Society was formed on the heels of Medalta gaining National Historic Site status.

2011 is a pretty big year for us. We managed to rescue Medalta from the wrecking ball and have turned it into a museum, contemporary ceramic artists’ centre and production pottery studio.

It’s our twenty-fifth anniversary this year (and ninety nine years since the building was built).

This month’s newsletter also features news from a lot of Medicine Hat’s cultural community, including The Hive, The Esplanade, The Monarch Theatre, Inspire Gallery, Studio and (soon) Cafe and Medicine Hat’s folk music scene.

We’re always looking for content so if you know of something we should be including, email Quentin the info and we’ll do our best to include it.

I would like to take this post to talk about Medalta for a second. I’m sure you all know about Medalta Potteries and if you don’t, all the information you will ever need to know is located on their site. This post is about their newsletters which are released monthly-ish and managed by a local celebrity of sorts, Quentin Randall – I only say that because I see his name at least once a day in some blog post, a Twitter post, an email, a city-based project, or in this case in the Medalta newsletters.

The Medalta newsletters, “Medalta, in the Historic Clay District”, are more than just news of the Medalta Potteries (there is plenty of that too though), they are about events happening around the city, art exposure, books, performances and more. It’s always a little bit different too which is nice. It becomes a very nice local resource, perhaps one that you haven’t thought of coming from a pottery museum.

Not convinced by words alone? Take a peek at the October newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter here.