A new festival in St. Paul will celebrate both the history and cultural variety of the St. Paul and area community.
The Heritage Festival will run on July 28 at the Centennial Seniors Center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The project is funded by the New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP) and involves the input and participation of local seniors as planners and committee members, explained Linda Boone, director with Town of St. Paul FCSS.
There will be a selection of activities representing a variety of cultures such as Highland and Ukrainian dancing, storytelling, African music and Japanese singers. The festival will also offer ethnic food sampling.
“Seniors will be demonstrating preparation of ethnic foods such as perogy making, for example,” said Boone.
Maxine Ball, local area senior on the organizing committee, said it’s interesting to see all the cultures around St. Paul.
“When I look around, I find so it interesting to see all the different cultures are coming together and creating St. Paul,” said Ball. She added she is looking forward to watching all of the dancing and also to hearing the stories of seniors. “I love listening to stories about how people came to be here.”
The project consists of two phases with the festival as the second phase. The first phase of the project involved collecting life stories from local area seniors. The stories will be compiled into a draft copy of a book, which will be displayed at the Heritage Festival.
St. Paul seniors often undervalue their stories, said Gail McKone, activity director for Sunnyside and a member of the organizing committee. She collected stories from seniors using a profile or a series of interview questions developed by members of the organizational committee. The profiles were also given to children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to involve them in collecting the stories of their family member.
“They think it’s ordinary stuff and everybody knows about it,” said McKone. “But we never cleared the land or walked to school in the snow.”
Admission to the festival is free but visitors will need to bring some money to purchase tickets to trade for food samples.
