Keystone Centre hosts first Family Fun Day

The Keystone Centre and the Keystone Centre Foundation welcomed families from across the community on Saturday for their first-ever Family Fun Day, a free event held at the north end of the Keystone Centre grounds.

The event, which drew over 1,000 people, was held to engage with the community and celebrate the start of the winter break for students, foundation executive director Barry Cooper told the Sun.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have 28 partners —businesses and organizations — that supported us financially, donated food or products, or came out to volunteer,” he said during the event. “You never put on an event this big on your own, and one of the beauties of Brandon is how strong our community is and how everyone steps up to help.”

Cooper said the foundation was established with three main goals in mind: educating the community about the value of the Keystone Centre, engaging with residents about what the facility does well and where it can improve, and supporting the centre through fundraising.

Family Fun Day was designed to bring all three together in a relaxed and welcoming way, he said.

“We wanted to have fun, and we wanted an opportunity to reach out to the community and say, ‘This is who we are,’” Cooper said. “We hosted it in a different part of the building than a lot of people usually see, and we wanted it to be completely free. It’s almost Christmas, it’s the first day of winter break for kids, and we just wanted to throw the doors open and say, ‘Come and have a party with us.’”

The free activities offered throughout the day were wide-ranging and aimed at children and families of all ages. Attractions included bouncy castles, a golf simulator, hockey shooting simulators, a “touch-a-truck” area, cookie decorating, face painting, free photos with Santa, skating and curling. Later in the afternoon, families were also invited upstairs for a movie, complete with free popcorn.

“Everything is free,” Cooper said. “And we’ve only been able to do that because we had so many partners step up and be part of it.”

The turnout exceeded expectations, with the steady stream of visitors continuing throughout the day.

“It’s been busy all day — well over 1,000 people,” Cooper said. “We actually ran out of food a little while ago, so we’re really pleased with the turnout for our very first event.”

Encouraged by the response, Cooper said he hopes Family Fun Day will become an annual tradition.

“We’ll absolutely have meetings and plan for the future, but the goal is always to be bigger and better. We’re going to try to make it even bigger next time.”

Regarding challenges during the inaugural event, Cooper said there were few, crediting the teamwork behind the scenes.

“Really, no major challenges,” he said. “The Keystone staff are incredible, our community partners have been wonderful to work with, and even the people here today have been so patient. It looks like everyone is having a lot of fun, so we’ve been really blessed to have this event.”

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