State College had been quiet in the summer — too quiet for some. So a group of people decided that maybe holding a small arts festival would liven things up a bit here.
That’s a very abridged version of how this major event called the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts began in 1967. Safe to say, summers in Happy Valley haven’t been the same since.
Things have livened up to where now approximately 150,000 people visit Happy Valley each July for the festival. Livened up to where there are now four other festivals in Centre County that happen around the same time each year as the Arts Festival, and, rather than competing against each other, they have complemented each other and simply made the middle of July a more magical time to be here.
This year is the 50th edition of the Arts Festival. Outside of Penn State football home games, it has become the biggest annual event in Central Pennsylvania, and it is consistently ranked as one of the best, if not the best, arts festival in the country. In fact, two of the last three years Sunshine Artist magazine has named it the top Fine Art and Design Show in America.
With the festival hitting a milestone year, this month’s Town&Gown is dedicated almost exclusively to the Arts Festival. You can read about its history in Tracey M. Dooms’s story, “Celebrating the 50th Festival,” find out about the impact its had on Centre County’s arts scene as a whole in Rebekka Coakley’s story, “Beyond the Festival,” and there’s a special advertising section, “People of the Arts Festival,” that profiles nearly 60 people who had a hand (or continue to have a hand) in making the Arts Festival the unique event it has become.
Town&Gown has had a special connection with the festival for 25 years (and not just because our respective of ces are near each other). Starting in 1991, the magazine began publishing the festival’s official program guide.
During my first summer as a student at Penn State, I took a job working at a festival food stand that was set up on Old Main lawn. Now, having worked on putting out the program guide for the past 10 years, it’s easy for me to see what an amazing accomplishment it is for the festival’s small staff and all of its volunteers to be able to put on this now five-day extravaganza. To have all these artists, performers, visitors, activities, food vendors, and more come together and populate sections of downtown State College and the Penn State campus without seemingly much of a hitch each year is quite the feat!
It truly has become a town-and- gown masterpiece and a symbol of what the two sides of College Avenue can do together!
