OUR LATEST NEWS
BCHC Community Connections
Help Us Win a Grant Through Town & Country Federal Credit Union's 2024 Better Neighbor Fund!
Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center is thrilled to announce our selection for the Town and Country Federal Credit Union’s 2024 Better Neighbor Fund!
This grant is a fantastic opportunity for our small, volunteer-driven nonprofit to secure vital funds for programming that enriches our local community.
How You Can Help:
– Vote Daily from October 1st to 31st!
– Spread the Word to your friends and family!
Vote Here: https://www.tcfcu.com/better-neighbor-fund-voting/
Or Scan This QR Code Daily to Vote:
Auditions Are Now Open Until November 1st, 2024!
Thank you to People's Choice Federal Credit Union !
Thank you to Peoples Choice Credit Union for their continued support of Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center and the BCHC Cultural Cuisine. It is greatly appreciated!
Bridging Our Past, Uniting Our Future: One Community, One People, One History
Learn more about September 1, 1924 and its significance today.
So Much Fun!
BCHC Cultural Cuisine at River Jam Fest 2024 was a fun time! With good food, music, and many smiling faces all around, what more did we need?
Thank you to all who helped to make this possible, our great cooks, outstanding volunteers, and visitors and community. Without your involvement and continued support, this would not have been possible.
Thank you Merci Gracias
Grazie ευχαριστώ Dankie
Shukran Obrigado Obrigada
Շնորհակալություն. Mamnountakek
Congrats to Our 2024 Volunteer of the Year!
Our Volunteer Appreciation Picnic was a great success and we are so happy to announce our newest Volunteer of the Year, Dr. Anastasia Weigle.
Anastasia is our archivist and head of the Archives/Collections of BCHC and is always there when we need her.
Although she is extremely busy as an Assistant Professor of Information and Library Sciences for the University of Maine Augusta, she gives tirelessly of her time, talents, and experience to help us to grow the archives and collections of the Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center.
Thank you Anastasia for all you do!
And the Winners Are.....
The top three winners of this year’s 2024 BCHC Vacationland Raffle were as follows:
$500 Cash Prize- Debbie F.
Lincoln Hotel overnight for 2- Andrea D.
Pineapple Ketch Sailboat Cruise- Alan C.
Thank you to all who supported BCHC with this raffle!
Better luck next year!
BCHC Hall of Fame
Big changes are on the way with the upcoming BCHC Hall of Fame.
Watch for the banners on the streets and be sure to stay tuned to learn who the newest inductees are!
More info will be forthcoming!
Our New Community Voices of Biddeford
The newest Voices of Biddeford are here and you don’t want to miss them!
Learn about our beautiful Biddeford City Hall during this video tour. Hear the fascinating stories of former Mayor Bonita Pothier, Susan Deschambault, Ron Cote as well as Sam Smithwick, Jim Murphy, Bert Gagne, Don Bisson, and many more!
Greater Biddeford - Saco Music Hall of Fame Ceremony Show Was A Great Success!
The greater Biddeford-Saco Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony was held of May 5th, 2024 and a great success! With over 700 in attendance. the energy was palpable and inspiring.
This area has a long-standing history of diverse musical and artistic talent, from the early days of Painchaud’s Band, vaudeville, the Old Orchard Beach Pier featuring the likes of Rudy Vallee, to present day and music is such an important part of all cultures. Whenever people celebrate, get together for special occasions, or with family and friends, music, along with food, is a big part of it! This event brought it all to our attention by celebrating our roots and culture with the music we grew up with.
For those that missed it, the event will be available on a dvd with a recommended donation of $20 in the near future, hopefully at our La Kermesse and River Jam Cultural Cuisine Events. There will also be a limited amount of Souvenir shirts, booklets, and buttons available.
Plans are in place for our second celebration next year on May 4th, but it will be hard to live up to this inaugural event.
Nominations for the second annual Greater Biddeford- Saco Music Hall of Fame will open up in late fall.
Be sure to watch the videos for a brief glimpse of what you saw or may have missed!
Have you tried geocaching? BCHC is excited to be a part of the Adventure Lab app!
BCHC is excited to be a part of the Adventure Lab app! Here’s a fun activity to do with Museum in the Streets!
Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which participants use a mobile device to visit places at specific locations all over the world.
Nancy Platt, an avid geocacher, built an interactive, location-based walking tour of the 30 Museum in the Streets locations using a phone application called Adventure Lab. You navigate to a location, in this case a Museum in the Streets sign, where you are prompted by the app to answer a question once you are within 50’ of the sign. The answer would be found by reading the MIS sign and is then entered into the app. After a person visits all 30 MIS locations, they will be able to find the bonus geocache which is a tag in the shape of the City of Biddeford logo.
There are over 50,000 travel adventures worldwide and many in our immediate area. The app is fun to have while traveling or just to see what is around you in Maine!
Please visit this site and see what geocaching is all about! If you think it looks like fun, please download the free app and start your geocaching adventure with BCHC!
https://www.geocaching.com/sites/adventure-lab/en/
Preserving the Past.... Look how far we've come!
In the beginning......how we started.
The Archives and Collections of BCHC are growing thanks to a wonderful team of volunteers and under the great leadership of committee chair and archivist, Anastasia Weigle, Ph.D.
Anastasia is a true gem and her leadership has been instrumental to the development of our archives and collections program as well as the building of a resource library with well over 1000 books in our database. We are truly fortunate to have her on board!
Things actually looked much worse when this journey started, but with perseverance and a little hard work, things are looking much better. We are moving forward and hope to be in a position to share our collections with others soon.
If you are interested in helping with archives and collections, please be sure to contact us via the email address, archives@biddefordcultural.org. We are currently looking for library help with organizing and cataloging the resource book collection.
And.... look at us today!
Thank You All For Your Support
Biddeford Cultural and Heritage Center would like to thank all those who support us during our fundraising events throughout the year, from the Annual Appeal, our GotSneakers Collection, the Vacationland Raffle, to the Flatbread Community Bake Day, and more!
You are all the glue that makes what we do possible. Without you and your continued support, the mission of the organization would not exist.
Be sure to sign up for our mailing list today to keep up with all the news and events.