Planning Moves Forward for Great Lakes Folk Festival Revival

For 15 years, the Great Lakes Folk Festival drew visitors from across the region to East Lansing for three days of traditional folk art, food, music and dance. Put on indefinite hiatus in 2017, a recently created Folk Festival Committee is working to bring the event back.

Leading the charge is Councilmember Mark Meadows.

“I think people have missed these community wide events,” Meadows said. “One of my objectives for getting elected last year was to see if we could get the festival up and running again.”

The committee held its first meeting towards the end of September. There, they formalized a meeting schedule and initiated research into similar folk festivals held in Michigan and nationally.

“That meeting had a surprising number of people from the public show up,” Meadows said. “I think there’s a lot of people in the community who were very upset that it [the festival] was ended. I think it indicates the strong interest our community has in getting this thing going again.”

While much remains to be discussed, the festival could return very soon.

“Our target would probably be the first or second week of August of next year, if we can get it done in the remaining time,” Meadows said. 

Initially, East Lansing was chosen to participate in the national Folk Festival over some large cities.

“Very surprisingly, I think we were competing against Seattle and Los Angeles and a number of big cities,” Meadows said. “But we got chosen and it was a huge success for the city of East Lansing. It brought in anywhere from 50-80 thousand people over a three day period.” 

The tradition is for the host city to run a successor festival after holding the National Folk Festival for three years. In 2002, the inaugural Great Lakes Folk Festival was held.

For the first few years, the city worked with Michigan State University to run the festival. 

“Until about the big economic crash that took place in 2008, from then on, the university pretty much ran the festival,” Meadows said. “The city would provide some DPW (Department of Public Works and Environmental Services) assistance, close streets and things like that.”

The festival continued to be popular but according to Meadows, in 2017 a new director of the MSU Museum, which housed the festival, decided to put the festival on hiatus for a year to “re-imagine it.”

“Obviously the real intent was to end the festival, because it didn’t come back,” he said. “The city didn’t have any say and shortly thereafter, COVID hit and nothing was going on.”

The committee is interested in working with MSU again and Meadows said that there’s a spot on the committee reserved for MSU.

If the festival is to return, raising money will be necessary. Once a tentative budget is determined, the committee wants to get to work on fundraising, Meadows said.

“We will be talking to GM, MSUFCU and Jackson National, some of the big companies in the area that have shown interest in investing,” Meadows said

He also said the committee will look into grant opportunities. 

The logistics are another matter. Staging and tents need to be mapped out across the downtown area and artists, performers and vendors need to be identified.

Meadows said the committee would like to explore moving across Grand River Avenue and coordinating with MSU, similar to the East Lansing Art Festival, which runs at the same time as the MSU Spring Arts and Crafts Show. 

With tentative plans looking towards next summer and impressive public interest, the Great Lakes Folk Festival is that much closer to returning.

“It’s a great event and got a wonderful response from not just East Lansing folks, but people who came from all over,” Meadows said.