Paul Bass Photo
The singing and drumming and climbing and thinking start in Fair Haven. Then the Hill. Then Dixwell. Then the center of town.
That’s how New Haven’s annual International Festival of Arts & Ideas rolls nowadays: first “popping up” in jam-packed neighborhood one-day “pop-up” mini-fests. Leading up to the 15-day blow-out festival on the Green.
On Monday festival and neighborhood leaders rolled out the plans for this year’s three pop-up fests. They’re going to busy: A full line-up of Latino and jazz performers along with a volleyball tournament and crafts and a Lee Cruz-led “food tour” at Christopher Columbus Family Academy for the May 30 Fair Haven fest; gospel, funk and R&B with a climbing wall and Krikko Obbott’s drawings at Trowbridge Square Park for the May 31 Hill bash; steel drums, drill teams, the New Haven Venom, and chess at the June 6 Dixwell celebration on the Q House’s outdoor plaza.
Meanwhile, click here and here to read about this year’s full festival, the 20th to date. It begins June 12.
“We want to build to be creative in our neighborhoods,” Hill activist Howard Boyd (at center in top photo between Krikko Obbott and Martha Dye) said of the neighborhood pop-up fests.
“It’s an opportunity,” said Stetson Branch Librarian Diane Brown, “for us all to become one.”