Palate: A Taste of Local is an elegant tasting experience, featuring 35 food and beverage vendors from across central Alberta. This award-winning event will take place on October 19. Do you have your tickets yet? Your ticket includes everything you need for a full tasting experience, with no hidden costs. Consider treating your team, your clients, or your friends and family to a night out while supporting our local business community, RDP Alumni Relations and RDP students at this year’s kick-off to Homecoming – Palate: A Taste of Local!

Get your tickets now! Please note, this event is 18+.

This signature event, presented by the Red Deer Polytechnic Alumni Association (RDPAA), provides an elevated tasting experience, with a focus on local food producers, craft breweries and distilleries and restaurateurs. At Palate, we celebrate the amazing vendors and alumni businesses that call Central Alberta home. If you’re interested in seeing your name on this event, sponsorship opportunities are still available, with more information here.

Check out everything happening Homecoming Weekend at RDP

Palate: A Taste of Local

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Cenovus Energy Learning Common | Red Deer Polytechnic

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Palate: A Taste of Local is an elegant tasting event that builds on the well-established reputation of the Fine Wine and Food Tasting Festival. We’ve combined the elegant experience you have enjoyed in the past with new elements we know you are going to love. This redesigned special event recently received national recognition, earning a silver medal in the annual Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education Prix d’Excellence!

Your ticket is all-inclusive, providing access to all of the items available from every vendor attending the Palate. There are no extra costs – the only thing you have to worry about, is how you will be able to sample everything.

Begin your evening with a champagne toast as you enter the event space. Palate vendors will offer a variety of food items, including sweet, savoury and international dishes, as well as small batch spirits, craft beer and soda, hand-crafted cocktails and mocktails, and other beverages.

Guests will immerse themselves in central Alberta’s local food and beverage culture, meeting the makers, owners and mixologists that bring these flavours to life while networking with other alumni and guests.

2023 Vendors

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Thank you to our Palate: A Taste of Local 2023 Sponsors

Lindsay Thurber alumnus craft custom guitar for a good cause

A guitar with special meaning is coming home thanks to two Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School Music Program alumnus who are passionate about supporting youth and strive to make a meaningful difference in the community.

As part of their quest to help make a difference, this year Jennah Salls and Jazdn Moore decided to support the Clayton Bellamy Foundation for the Arts by building an electric guitar made from all local wood in Central Alberta. Proceeds from the event will help support the build of an arts centre in Lakeland.

“This guitar project sparked from a combination of everything we’re passionate about. Being such big fans of music and its impact, alongside our goal to give back to our community as much as possible, once we discovered the Clayton Bellamy Foundation, the vision all came together,” said Jennah. “We wanted to build this guitar to have the experience under our belt and since it had so much potential to be a part of something bigger, it was a no brainer to tie it into the Clayton Bellamy Foundation.”

Construction of the guitar began under the mentorship of local luthier David Gilmore with Gilmore Guitars. “We then decided to kick it up a notch by starting a fundraiser around our community with the hopes of raising as much money as possible for the Foundation’s cause,” said Jazdn.

The guitar was auctioned off at the Clayton Bellamy Foundation For The Arts event in Bonnyville earlier this month.

“This fundraiser also was designed to try and raise the winning bid to be able to bring the guitar back to Red Deer considering that the auction for the foundation takes place outside of our community,” said Jennah. “Our mission was to get it into the hands of other youth by donating it to the LTCHS music program as alumni. To further support Clayton’s amazing objective, we also decided to put in a custom made coffee station, coffee table and end table set as an auction item. It’s just been an incredible journey building this guitar and dreaming bigger and bigger as each day goes by and we simply want to make the biggest impact possible with this project!”

Thanks to the generous support of the community, Jennah and Jazdn were able to put a winning bid of $11,000 for the guitar. The custom furniture also went for $8,500.

As a result, the custom built guitar was given to Lindsay Thurber so that students in the music program can have an opportunity to play it and feel its impact.

“We are so grateful to benefit from Jennah and Jazdn’s commitment to the arts and their passion for supporting the community,” said Jennifer Mann, Music Director at Lindsay Thurber. “The story of the guitar and Jennah and Jazdn’s generosity will live on for years to come through our music program.”