![]() ![]() “We want to build a kind of robust, interesting, fulfilling, kind of life for people in Kokomo. ![]() I kind of joked, ‘why don’t we macrame a car? To kind of try to tie the automotive history of Kokomo in with this crafty idea of making macrame,’ and it stuck,” Steel said. “We were talking about the Strawberry Festival and the art fair component, and we were talking about how we can draw people's interest down to that area. Steel, a member of Kokomo Public Arts Action Coalition, said the idea came from a brainstorming meeting. Members of the community are invited to join local artist Sheila Haworth for an instructional macrame lesson, to add their own touch to this engaging artwork. Gregory Steel, an Indiana University Kokomo professor of New Media, Art, and Technology, worked with senior sculpture student Cybil Johnson to design and weld an art car made out of 200 feet of metal rebar. Artsapalooza will feature local art available for purchase, engaging art activities, and demonstrations of various art techniques. “We invited many of those same vendors back to participate in Strawberry Festival,” Alexander said. Artsapalooza was initially started last September as a stand-alone event but was rained out. Joining this year’s festival, she said, is the Artsapalooza Art Market. We love being able to put all these organizations and businesses front and center.” “It gives businesses of all types an opportunity to sell directly to a community that comes out and supports the festival. “The strawberry shortcake dessert is a reason to get here, but then take advantage of everything else – all the food trucks, and learn about all the different vendors, said Alexander. This annual event attracts thousands of people to downtown Kokomo, said Susan Alexander, the manager of Downtown Initiatives and Creative Placemaking for the Greater Kokomo Economic Development Alliance. “It’s important to us to be part of the community and to work to make these things happen.” We love hosting this event for our community, and hope that everyone will plan to join us again next year.“It’s just fun to be behind-the-scenes part of the festival, something that means a lot to a lot of the people in Kokomo, something that does bring a lot of traffic to downtown for that day, and to be kind of an instrumental part of making that all work well,” Akers-Partlow said. Our winner was “Lazarus” who was a very convincing Yoda! With the help of PetSmart and Blue Buffalo, our Star Wars-themed contest allowed us to get photos of dogs dressed in a Star Wars costumes, and our panel of judges picked the winner, who won a large gift basket put together by PetSmart and Blue Buffalo. One of our highlights for this year, given the date of the festival being May the 4th, was our “May the 4th Be With You” Dog Costume contest. Top that off with a host of twelve food trucks and vendors, serving a variety of foods to satisfy everyone’s taste buds, including STRAWBERRIES! We were excited to host over 50 arts and crafts vendors, with everything from jewelry to pottery, and caricatures to face painting. Brenda Lee, and then enjoyed an afternoon of timeless music by Main Street, one of our local favorites. On our outside stage, we opened the festival with the Slater-Marietta Green Wave Chorus, led by Ms. Inside Slater Hall, there was dancing by the Irish Dancers from the West End, a theatrical presentation by the Travelers Theatre, rousing music by Authenticity, mind-blowing magic by The Magic Man, improv by Adliberation, and karate at its best, performed by Living Water Martial Arts. Many thanks to all who participated in and attended this year’s Strawberry Festival! It was held on Saturday, May 4th, and had something for every age group. ![]()
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