Festivals young and old and local

The Seventh Annual Friday Harbor Film Festival just finished. It gets better as it grows, and it was pretty good last year.

That was last week. Next week the 35th annual Art’s Alive opens with a reception Friday at Maple Hall. You are invited.

The planners behind Art’s Alive, the Town of La Conner’s Art Commission, chose the theme “Celebrating Skagit Valley’s Art Legacy” to connect back to the early days of Art’s Alive, when venues up and down First Street hosted art. In those first decades community volunteers planned, hosted, executed, cleaned up after and celebrated their town’s premier art event, made possible by people like you.

Today, not so much. Maybe it’s because the price of the art has gone up, or the buyers and their credit cards are from way out of town or too many of the artists are not so tied to the community. Or maybe the community doesn’t see itself served by the weekend: the purpose seems to have morphed into getting people through Maple Hall and on to shop and eat and drink in businesses that are less and less owned by our neighbors and compatriots.

Is that what 35 years of success does, bring in a new generation untethered from the originators?

The Film Festival in Friday Harbor, by contrast, only in its seventh year, exudes local. The program statement by the director and producer is titled “It takes a small village.”

A cadre of dedicated volunteers work almost all year to stitch the coming year’s festival together. On festival weekend 150 additional Islanders staff six venues taking tickets, setting up, cleaning up and more. The 56 page program is not only full of merchants advertising, there are two pages crammed with the logos of supporting and sponsoring businesses and organizations, all growing the festival’s success with funds, donations and in-kind contributions.

In Friday Harbor there is a village engaged and participating. The businesses are aiming for a return on investment, certainly. They have also, along with their residential neighbors, established an institution and are on their way to creating a legacy.

That is just like the founders, business owners, residents and artists who made their dream of Art’s Alive real 35 years ago.

That’s our local legacy. Are we succeeding at nourishing it and keeping it vibrant for ourselves and not just for the dollars it generates on First and Morris Streets?