The Big Event: Boiling Pot Festival

TThere will be music, beer and an opportunity to throw away that beer cup knowing it will become compost not landfill at the second annual Boiling Pot Festival. It’s an all-ages, family-friendly cultural event focused on bringing a showcase of local, regional and national music to downtown Kalamazoo and using culture to bring together participants at the same time.

Organizers describe the weekend as a “new model in the festival scene,” one that seeks to bring people together at a massive music and art gathering, as other events do, but then seeks to engage with the audience in a broader way.

“We do this in many ways, from allowing community members to express themselves through collaborative art, to hosting a number of local businesses to nonprofits to interact directly with the audience,” says Matt Lechel, of the I.D.E.A. Association.

The event is jammed with musical events.

And as another part of its cultural offerings, the festival this year will have more art installations than ever.

"We are working with a large team of dedicated artists in Kalamazoo to truly transform the festival grounds," Lechel says. "There will be four primary installations regarding this year’s theme of astronomical proportion's."

The main stage will constitute a solar theme and the second stage will be a lunar theme. The existing dome on the Arcadia Festivial Site will be a "chill zone" with a lantern installation. And the Exquisite Corpse Artist Collective will be directing a terrestrial themed Dymaxion globe.

There also will be other installations. For example, the entryway to the festival will be adorned with various plants and vines. Interactive art projects will take place throughout the weekend, as well.

This year's event will have new things like an outdoor bowling alley and a "bike shop" hosted all three days by Open Roads Bike Program.

Full composting and recycling services will be featured at Boiling Pot, a trait unique to Boiling Pot among downtown Kalamazoo festivals. This year, the festival will take all compost (including beer cups from local company Fabri-Kal that can be composted) to the local farm, The Eater’s Guild.

Last  year the lack of a commercial compost facility in Kalamazoo required organizers to drive compost to Grand Rapids. Boiling Pot is partnering with the Office for Sustainability at WMU to create a sustainability plan for the festival site. Live updates of waste diversion will be available at the festival as part of an interactive display called the Junk Report.

This year, the second for the festival, two goals identified by organizers are to partner with as many community groups -- this includes businesses, nonprofits, and grassroots groups -- as possible and to improve greening efforts, not only at the festival but for the entire community.

"Merging the line between cultural events and social activism is a huge part of I.D.E.A. Association’s work; the greening efforts at Boiling Pot will raise consciousness of festival goers through fun and professional methods. We hope to continue working with Downtown Kalamazoo to help raise the bar for sustainability of future festivals in our community," says Chris Broadbent, I.D.E.A. Association Board President.

Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Matt Lechel,the I.D.E.A. Association