Community festivals come and go

The demise of the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival is a normal process of community festivals.

Most communities have community festivals.  It’s part of the process of creating a sense of community and community pride.  And most community festivals eventually fall by the wayside.  Locally we’ve lost such festivals as the Lacey Music, Arts and Dance Festival, the Tumwater Bluegrass Festival, the Tenino Labor Day Festival and many others.

Community festivals disappear for many reasons.  Some are unable to raise the money necessary to continue.  Some fall victim to a lack of community support or a lack of volunteers – the key for most festivals.  Some of them fail to adapt to modern times and fall by the wayside.

But, most are eventually replaced by new and different activities.  Lacey has its Lacey Spring Fun Fair and it’s Barbeque  Festival.  Tumwater has it’s Fourth of July celebration.

Olympia continues with Capital Lakefair but support for the event is slowly slipping away.  Several community groups have withdrawn from providing food and volunteers are difficult to find.   But, it still seems to meet a need.  Lakefair’s carnival and parade still have community support.

But, it has already been replaced as Olympia’s premier festival by the Procession of Species and Olympia’s biannual Arts Walk.

So, while we’ll miss the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival, it’s just another step in the process of a developing community.