The tenth annual Grand Avenue Festival may be a couple months away, but it’s worth marking your calendar now.
The festival, which will take place Nov. 10, will include decorating a 20-foot dragon and a tour of a never-before accessed historic armory, according to the festival’s planning meeting Monday evening.
The festival, put on annually by Grand Avenue Arts and Preservation, will run from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., including an “after hours” time from 8-10 p.m.
This year, the organization has planned many community-engaging activities in order to showcase the unique arts and culture Grand Avenue has to offer.
One new event to take place this year is the decoration of a 20-foot cloth dragon, run by the AZ Dragoneers. The dragon will be displayed in a tent at Fushicho Daiko Dojo, Arizona’s longest-running public taiko drumming venue. There, community members can paint, add stickers and otherwise decorate the dragon as they please.
This year’s festival will also feature historic tours of a 40,000 square foot former National Guard Armory that has not been open to the public in previous years. It has been renovated into an adaptive-reuse project to be called the Armory, according to the Phoenix New Times.
“It’s being renovated into artist studios and creative space, so that is going to be one of our historic preservation tours this year,” Beatrice Moore, the director of Grand Avenue Arts and Preservation, said.
According to her, this year’s festival is focused on allowing the public to create their own artwork.
“We’re going to have an increased component this year of more make-and-take stations, and we’ll provide all of the supplies for free,” Moore said.
In fact, the only parts of the festival that cost money will be food and other items purchased from vendors.
“Our goal is to not charge people for things,” Moore said. “Basically, they’re just spending money on food, and if they want to buy a piece of art, they can do that.”
The festival will have free parking, portable bike racks and even a musical bus called the “Jam Tram” to take festival-goers from place to place.
A huge component of the activities at the festival will be community projects created to eventually decorate Grand Avenue as the sum of many different artistic minds.
Artist Kristin Wesley works with community participation for the festival and is excited to showcase artwork from the festival’s participants.
“One of the community projects is the hanging gardens, where we actually take artwork and hang it from trees. This is all about creating an unexpected art experience,” Wesley said. “It’s different than going into a gallery and seeing flat art on the wall.”
Overall, the festival is set to be an affordable, activity-filled and artistic celebration of the culture in Grand Avenue.
“People should come out because it’s a unique experience to be able to participate in art and to learn about it,” Wesley said. “Come out to support a historic neighborhood.”
Contact the reporter at nludden@asu.edu
