One of the things we love about Rhode Island is the amazing art scene, and this weekend one of my favorite local events is taking place. Festival Fete is an art festival featuring local artists, performers, and food vendors that bring together community to celebrate the arts. It is a two day event full of music, entertainment, free crafts for kids, Artists, and local vendors.
The mission of Festival Fete is: to offer a platform for local artists — of various mediums and levels — to show their work. In collaboration with community talent, volunteers and sponsors, to create profitable platforms that celebrate locally grown art, food and merriment.
“This is not your grandmother’s Art Festival!” is used as one of the festival’s tag lines, and certainly prepares you a bit for the 10 foot costumed Big Nazo creatures roaming amongst the vendor tents. Today we were charmed by painters and jewlers, bakers and popcorn-makers, and children selling their art. Women twirling rolling pins and covered in flower danced through the crowd to the music of their band, and tee-shirts were sold recycled as skirts along side organic laundry care by Yore. This festival is all about community, great art and supporting the arts. the Rock Climbing Wall donates 1/2 of it’s profit to ArtIsSmart, and Smashing Photo Booth donates the entire fee charged for photos.
Art Is Smart serves children by raising funds to support public education art programs. We produce and sell AIS merchandise, hold fundraising events, and direct 100% of corporate and individual donations to public school art teachers who request funding via a short, specific letter outlining what they need funding for and how much. A simple and straightforward process for raising and distributing funds, Art Is Smart is based on pure passion for the arts.
Even young artists in the community are given a chance to shine. The booth for them is free and in return they donate 10% of their proceeds to the ArtIsSmart program. David created the Festival along with his wife Jennifer, and says that grants are provided to nurture art programs in Rhode Island public schools where sometimes the budget for art supplies is zero. “Some schools with no budget for art supplies will come to us with requests for the most basic supplies such as paper and colored pencils.” says David. Over the past year thousands of dollars in grants went to funding basic art supplies for Rhode Island public schools.
We learned about the award winning art program riverz edge arts which is a really cool program that took part in the festival. It serves as a social enterprise where professional artists serve as mentors, guiding youth through their arts education in an environment that stresses hands-on learning, teamwork, mutual respect, and responsibility. At one of the booths I fell in love with the great logos on the Lotus Life tee-shirts that read “Create Yourself” and “She Believed She Could So She Did”. The sun came out to shine down on the festivities driving us to get refreshment at nearby Pinkberry frozen yogurt, where they also were donating proceeds from their sales to Art is Smart. The festival will be at Garden City June 8th & 9th from 10am – 5pm, since proceeds for many of the activities go to charity, you don’t have to feel guilty about going both days if you want. It’s all in the name of Art!
Thanks for sharing your experiences at Festival Fete with your readers! Great article!
Danielle, I am a huge fan of the festival and thrilled to have the opportunity to enjoy it and then share it! Thanks!