Every year, Sunshine Butterflies Disability Support Charity celebrate their famous ‘Christmas in the Country’ Members Christmas party.
“It’s such a special event for our members, families and staff to all get together and celebrate the year that’s been and for everyone to watch our members perform their Christmas carols,“ drama co-ordinator, Femke Van Der Kallen said.
This event hosted annually by Sunshine Butterflies, gives members the opportunity to showcase their music and drama skills to family and loved ones.
Sunshine Butterflies music and drama group ‘Drama Kings & Queens’ have been busy rehearsing this year for their big 2020 concert, sadly the annual extravaganza had to be cancelled due to Covid restrictions.
“After months of rehearsing, it was upsetting for us all to hear that it couldn’t go ahead. It was also an incredibly difficult thing for our members living with a disability to understand why they couldn’t perform for their family and friends,“ Femke said.
However, the innovative music and drama group would not give up. They put their heads together and came up with a way to share their Christmas concert to all their friends, family and community.
They have just launched a virtual Christmas concert to perform online to their community. This musical story named ‘Finding Christmas’ will follow the journey of a boy finding his home for Christmas and will premiere on their Facebook page.
This event is being supported by the local Noosa Arts Theatre who provided Sunshine Butterflies with their performance space to host this special event.
“We reached out to the theatre after the Christmas party was cancelled. We wanted to give our members a full theatre experience and celebrate a local, independent business,” Femke said.
“We can’t thank them enough for their support.“
Sunshine Butterflies members are excited to perform this musical story to the community.
“We’ve had to adapt to changes quickly this year and produce a lot of online events,“ Program Support, Linda Grams said.
“It began with ‘Butterfly TV’ (a zoom-based video chat program for our members to interact during lockdown) and now it’s our Christmas Concert. We are incredibly proud of our staff for being so innovative in difficult times.“
Sunshine Butterflies Christmas show has been written and produced by program coordinator Femke Van Der Kallen, and performed by Sunshine Butterflies fabulous members in the popular ‘Drama Kings & Queens’ program.
Sunshine Butterflies Christmas concert ‘finding Christmas’ was premiered as a live event on their Facebook page on Wednesday 16 December.
