Heritage and HistoryIncorporating History and Celebrating Your Heritage with Community FestivalsSharing the unique history of your region or community might be the major focus of your festival or it might be just one of several components. Either way, incorporating history into community festivals affords you the opportunity to educate festivalgoers about your community while you entertain them. One major challenge is finding the right balance between education and entertainment so that you present an authentic picture of your past while keeping it fun and interactive. Building a huge tipi (teepee) might be fun, but if Native people in your region never lived in tipis (and no Native people in Kentucky did), then you are presenting a distorted view of history and promoting stereotypes in a way that many Native people find offensive. Creating an authentic dwelling from Kentucky's prehistory (as the festival coordinators do at the Archaeology Weekend at Gladie Creek) is just as much fun and actually more engaging, not only because it is authentic but also because it is something few people have ever seen or experienced. Another challenge is developing a community consensus about what really happened "way back when" and then deciding which stories you want to share and how. This can be touchy, as people often have diverse - and firmly held! - opinions about the past. You don't want your festival to "air dirty linen" or promote negative images about your culture, let alone to rekindle bad feelings. The "Hatfields and McCoys" faced this challenge when they decided to host a festival in Pikeville that celebrates the peace that now exists between these once infamous feuding families. The festival has been a huge success because the organizers took the time to ensure not only accuracy but also consensus among the descendent clans. Continue on to: |