The old is new again, and what a joy! After a two-year hiatus the 24th annual Garlic and Arts Festival is back and ready to entertain you on the field in Orange on October 1 and 2. For those of you who have been annual visitors to the fest over the years, much has remained the same. We still have the Main, Family, and Spoken Word stages to entertain, bountiful food vendors, amazing artists, friendly farmers, timely community organizations, chef demos, and hooping and games for all. But there are some new features that you should be aware of too.
The festival admission is still family friendly, priced at $10 per adults for the whole weekend, $5 for seniors, students, and EBT cardholders. Kids under 12 are free. Credit and debit cards will be accepted at the entrances. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. THIS YEAR we are offering on-line ticket purchase in advance. Click here to purchase tickets on-line. Cash and cards will still be accepted at the Upper and Lower entrance gates. Please note that there will be no refunds if you do not use your advance purchase ticket. Your ticket dollars will support the Festival Community Grant Making which occurs annually..
It has also become clear to us that Electric Vehicles are here to stay and will be a big part of our lives going forward. We have planned a large display of various EVs including cars, trucks, bicycles, converted tractors, and yard maintenance equipment. The displays will rotate throughout the weekend and owners will be present to answer your questions about the experience of owning and using an EV. See the line-up and look for updates as the festival approaches.
Please read the text below to learn how the festival Organizers made the decision to plan and host the festival once again, all during the winter months and covid restrictions. And we learned quite a bit about our own capabilities and the process of bringing new participants into the organization. We are thrilled to be hosting the festival once again in 2022.
In 2022 the Organizers made a couple of discoveries. First of all we learned that it is possible to plan a festival in mid-winter while honoring the requirements to keep socially distant and remain outdoors. In addition the Organizers realized that after 23 years of creating this wonderful annual event, we needed to find new, younger folks to join us and bring new energy to the planning. We learned that all things are possible when we work together in cooperation and community. This is what gives us hope.
A description of how we spent the first few months of 2022 planning together was published as a My Turn article in the Greenfield Recorder on May 16, 2022 and may be found below.
Garlic and Arts: Behind the Scenes
The North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival in Orange returns Oct 1 and 2 after a two year pandemic hiatus. I could go on about the amazing exhibitors and food, music and performance on three stages, and that we only produce 2 bags of trash for 8,000 people. But this column is about how and why the festival started and endures.
Garlic and Arts was birthed by five artists and farmers with love of livelihood, but no venue to sell our wares in the North Quabbin. It was 1998 and the ‘buy local’ craze was in its infancy. It had not yet hit our towns and likely never would in the way the nearby 5-college area would benefit from the buzz. There was beauty and ample skill to be found in our region and it deserved celebrating. Five friends each tossed in 20 bucks to print up postcards and just do it. The week before the first festival, a hurricane came through. Neighbors showed up with tractors and gravel to prepare for whatever crowds might show up to a muddy field in the middle of the woods. And they did, almost 1,000 strong. In 2000, we moved the event from Seeds of Solidarity Farm down the road to more spacious Forsters Farm which continues to welcome the lively festival masses.
The committee has grown from 5 to 25 over the years, all creative and outside of the box thinkers. We are neighbors and friends who meet year round over meals to plan, then raise the festival village by hand. It’s fully volunteer, people powered, not profit driven. There is no president, paid staff, or corporate sponsorship. Collaboration combined with a just do it attitude are core to the event’s sustained success and to the positive vibe that permeates. Attendees feel good when they step onto the foliage ringed festival fields, and usually better when they leave.
We’ve never done a business plan or feasibility study, which we joke would have come out as…a joke. It would not likely have projected that thousands of people would show up on an isolated field in one of the lowest wealth communities in the state. Ingenuity, muscle, and magical thinking have reigned.
One unique organizing element involves each of 100 exhibitors participating in a festival set-up day or making a hearty meal for these exhibitor/workers. We implemented this participation model as a way to keep vendor fees modest while garnering much needed help when the committee was facing burnout some years back. Moving beyond “show up and sell” results in fruitful connections among exhibitors and strengthens the festival as a village, not solely an event. The weekend of, 150 more volunteers park cars, welcome attendees, work recycle/compost stations, or deliver treats from our wood fired oven to other volunteers.
In the early days, we had to call repeatedly to convince the then editor of the Valley Advocate to list the festival in their calendar section. They proclaimed that “no one wanted to go to Orange.” We countered that he was wrong and red-lining our community. And he was, in fact, wrong.
Fast forward to a winter afternoon, January 2022. The committee is gathered around a firepit, tea mugs in mitten clad hands, happy to not be zooming as we affirm the live return of the 24th Annual North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival. During the pandemic hiatus, the committee kept up the festival spirit and our connection. We held a virtual festival, offered a free marketplace for artists struggling for sales, and dug into reserves to make small grants as we’d done each year, giving $10,000 to over a dozen local causes even without any festival income. Tradition is to start each monthly meeting or pre-festival workday meal with a gently revealing question that builds appreciation of each other. Values have always been at the heart of Garlic and Arts, so sharing some in the cold fresh air provided a ceremonial restart moment. Connection, healing from isolation, relearning, staying joyful, support for artist/farmer livelihoods were voiced among many reasons to bring the festival back.
After a few more winter meetings around a fire, on an April Sunday we gathered at the festival site to clear two years of fallen branches, and sweep the dust and debris from the stage we’d built together of local lumber. We are excited to bring back this celebration, one long infused with cooperation, self-determination, and a belief that together we can and must envision and shape the communities in which we want to live.
Deb Habib lives in Orange. The festival committee members are among her favorite people ever. To sign up to volunteer at the festival and learn more, visit www.garlicandarts.org.