Take families, food, fun. Add lots of music, a little water if needed. Throw in a dash of ethnicity, and lay on the nice weather.
That’s the basic recipe for community festivals, and they really cook in the summertime, prime time for activities and entertainment out of doors. Bigger than a beach and beyond the back-yard barbecue, festivals are block parties to which everyone’s invited. These big parties offer places where communities can celebrate seasons, leisure time and their own identities.
“I think festivals have become a community’s town square,” says Joy Meierhans, director of Pride of the Fox RiverFest in St. Charles and a professional festival and event planner for more than 20 years.
The Tri-Cities have a long history of community festivals and indeed can boast that festival fever began, at least in Illinois, in Geneva. Swedish Days, a six-day extravaganza of music, food and ethnic heritage, celebrates its 51st anniversary this year on June 20-25. Swedish Days commemorates the town’s ethnic heritage, but it’s a good bet that not all the 250,000 visitors flocking to this grandparent of Illinois festivals are Swedish.
“We are just bursting at the seams,” says Sherri Weitl, nee Anderson, of the festival’s impact on this town of 20,000 residents during its six-day run.
Weitl, publicity director for the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, is among Tri-Cities festival planners who say that fests are proliferating because people, here and elsewhere, are looking for things to do, especially as a family.
“I feel that a great number of people with two-income families, for their off time, weekend time, are really looking for quality events they can do with their entire family,” says Weitl. “Everybody wants to be entertained and have a good time.”
Busy families who don’t spend much time together during the week, or even during the school year, are a prime target for summertime festival planners. Accordingly, many of the summer fairs are planned and promoted as family fare for reasons that are partly economic and partly civic. Families with disposable income have money to spend during their leisure time, and suburban communities benefit from an image as a good place for families.
“Nobody wants to leave their kids anymore,” says Meierhans. “Everything is very, very family-oriented.”
At St. Charles’ popular Scarecrow Festival, one new feature this fall will be the Family Fun Trail, offering activities and booths showcasing places of interest to families. The Family Fun Trail will be set along the Fox River, and it represents a retooling of Business Row, an area of business booths.
Valerie O’Dell, festival coordinator at the St. Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau, says the new trail enhances the focus on family fun that the three-day, non-alcoholic festival offers. O’Dell has contacted a number of Chicago and suburban museums about appearing on the trail and is encouraging businesses to shape their offerings and activities toward families.
“Our entire festival is based on the premise of the family,” she says. “We try to offer free as many things as possible.”
Community festivals may be free to visitors, but they represent a significant economic endeavor, costing and generating dollars. They take money to mount, offer ready markets to participating and sponsoring businesses, and can be a powerful dollar magnet in a community.
“The interesting thing about festivals is people don’t have a clue about the cost,” says Jean Gaines, president of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors four major festivals a year, one for each season. “The port-a-potties, the insurance, that’s where the real costs are, and you can’t even factor in the volunteer effort.”
Cost varies from year to year, especially depending on cost of entertainment, but a festival the scope of Swedish Days costs more than $300,000, according to Gaines.
The tab for community parties that are free to festgoers is picked up by a wide assortment of other participants. Fees paid by vendors and commercial exhibitors cover some costs. Increasingly, fairs, or specific parts of them, are being “branded,” that is, associated with underwriting sponsors.
Ameritech is one corporation with a presence in virtually every community, as well as a significant budget for sponsoring events within communities.
“The operative word is community partnership,” says Kay Hatcher, external affairs director for Ameritech. “This is our contribution in the community.”
Hatcher is responsible for reviewing contribution opportunities among communities within Kane, DuPage and Kendall Counties, and Ameritech’s ubiquity means it has many such opportunities.
With a large number of “hometowns,” given Ameritech’s size, Hatcher says the company also seeks to spread its support around among communities. One of this year’s recipients, for example, is Oswego PrairieFest. Ameritech has been doing business for 100 years in that small but growing Kendall County community in the southern Fox Valley.
“We celebrate 100 years in a community by trying to find a special niche,” Hatcher explains. “In this case PrairieFest seemed the perfect way to do that.”
Festival organizers say corporate support or partnership is crucial to their finances and festival quality.
“Sponsors are more than happy to reach a family-oriented crowd of 250,000 people,” says Gaines in Geneva. “That’s a great partnership. They’re getting the audience they want and they (help) put on a bigger, better festival.”
Corporate backing also makes possible things that might not be affordable otherwise. Meierhans says that thanks to sponsorship from Colonial Cafes and Ice Cream, Pride of the Fox in St. Charles has been able to bring in a sand sculptor and, for the first time this year, a playing-card “architect” who holds the world’s record for the tallest house of cards.
“I like to bring things in that people don’t see anywhere else,” says Meierhans, who is also proud of the free, theatrical-quality face painting offered at Pride of the Fox, done by Faceination, a company of makeup artists from Montreal headed by a woman who is consultant for the exotically costumed Cirque du Soleil circus troupe.
If organizers and promoters know and repeat their successes, they also acknowledge that some attractions they try are fest busts. The duds get dumped, such as helium balloons that literally wouldn’t fly in freezing Fox Valley air to promote a special Geneva business event held during an exceptionally cold March. Others take time–and good weather–to ripen.
Geneva’s fall Festival of the Vine, which now attracts 75,000 people for three days of food, wine tasting, art, games and shopping, began rather inauspiciously 20 years ago.
“It was horrible, it rained,” recalls Gaines, a 23-year Chamber veteran who helped usher in the festival. “It took two, three years (to catch on).”
Even as the weather shapes up into summer, festival season is already under way, offering tastes, sounds, games and goods for diverse palates.
Says Delorise Ivy, hired in late 1999 as executive director of the Batavia Chamber of Commerce and now helping to plan her first Windmill City Fest, “I don’t think you can ever have enough of them.”
MAJOR FAIRS AND FESTIVALS
– Pride of the Fox RiverFest, St. Charles, June 8-11
– PrairieFest, Oswego, June 15-18
– Blues on the Fox, Aurora, June 16-17
– Swedish Days, Geneva, June 20-25
– Windmill City Festival, Batavia, July 7-8
– Kane County Fair, July 18-23, St. Charles
– Downtown Fox Rox and Chord on BluesFest, St. Charles, Aug. 4-6
– Fox Valley Folk Music and Storytelling Festival, Geneva, Sept. 3-4
– Festival of the Vine, Geneva, Sept. 8-10
– Scarecrow Festival, St. Charles, Oct. 13-15
– Christmas Walk and House Tour, Geneva, Dec. 1-2
More info is available at these Web sites:
www.prideofthefox.com
www.chordonblues.com
www.visitstcharles.com
www.foxvalleyblues.org/bluesshows.cfm
www.state.il.us/fairsearch
