This year, Cultural Outreach will showcase Trent University’s diversity and talent and will truly “Challenge The Way You Think.”

Organized yearly by the Trent International Students’ Association (TISA), Cultural Outreach brings together an impressive array of music, dance, and performances from around the world into a single show.

Cultural Outreach 2015, titled “Eureka!” is set to take place on Saturday, March 14 at 2pm and 7pm at the Showplace Performance Centre.

In a continuation of Trent’s 50th Anniversary’s motto: “Challenge The Way You Think,” the show will feature its first ever digitalized host: Eureka. Eureka is an artificial intelligence computer software that seeks to understand the world and its diversity through the show’s performances and social media outlets.

The stage will come alive with salsa, Ethiopian dances, afro-beats, Caribbean mixes, an anthem mash-up, and bhangra, just to name a few.

Eureka is a computer program created to examine human beings and their diverse cultures. Using the Internet, Eureka searches through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media outlets to learn more about the human race as they go about their day-to-day lives. Such an analysis then allows her to develop a desire to be something more.

As Eureka yearns for life, she realizes that we all have something in common, something we tend to forget or become oblivious too. But little do we know that through song, dance, poetry, and any other form of art, we can definitely uncover what Eureka has as a hidden agenda.

Therefore, join us on March 14 to meet Eureka as we unravel her discoveries and gain understanding of her findings that explain how the diversification of cultures can be connected and yet disconnected in many ways.

As an event that seeks to embody TISA’s motto: “Bridging Boundaries, Connecting Cultures, Breaking Barriers,” Cultural Outreach is a celebration of diversity and difference, but also a demonstration of how students and community members from all corners of the world can come together to create a whole that is truly spectacular. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

Cultural Outreach is an entirely student run event. TISA executives began planning and discussing the event since early October 2014, while many performers began their weekly rehearsals as early as December 2014. The first sets of auditions were held during late January, while the second sets were held in February.

Auditions for Cultural Outreach are highly competitive, as all applicants place an enormous amount of effort in their performances. For those acts that are selected to perform, rehearsals continue until the day of the show. In addition, the Cultural Outreach Organizing Committee conducts all planning leading up to the show and backstage management that ranges from lighting, to music, to props.

This event not only showcases Trent’s multiculturalism, but also provides students with an opportunity to acquire new skills, get involved, and interact with people from around the world. Behind the curtains of the Showplace Performance Centre stage, the world truly comes together in a mixture of talents, languages, costumes, and most of all, cultures.

TISA invites all Peterborough community members to join Eureka and experience a vibrant and multicultural show at Cultural Outreach 2015. We will truly challenge the way you think.