Silk Hope, NC – This Spring marks the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance’s kindest gift to the earth yet. The festival, held April 17-20, is put on by the non-profit Shakori Hills, Inc., whose mission is to preserve and enhance the Shakori Hills Farmstead in order to provide a place for community building through arts and education in Chatham County, NC and beyond. This spring, the festival will be offering a variety of ways to learn how to be earth-friendly. In a world that is finally starting to notice the importance of conservation, recycling, and environmental education, Shakori Hills is one of the local organizations leading the way to a healthier earth.
This spring, for the first time, all festival vendors will be providing compostable materials with which to eat including utensils, plates, and cups. They are doing this with the help of some friends. Brooks Contracting will be hauling all of the compost to their industrial composting facility in Goldston, NC.
Festival organizer Jordan Puryear commented, “We are encouraging all festival-goers to do their best at helping in our efforts to reduce trash at the festival and to help keep Shakori Hills beautiful!”
The festival has always recycled bottles, cans, and other containers and will continue to do so. Through this effort to protect the environment of the festival grounds, Shakori Hills hopes to encourage attendees to do the same as they return to their everyday lives.
The Shakori Hills spring festival often coincides with the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s Piedmont Farm Tour (www.carolinafarmstewards.org). This year, area residents can make it an extra special weekend by attending both events. Day tickets for the festival are buy-one-get-one-free with the possession of a Farm Tour button.
Back by popular demand, the Sustainability Fair will serve as the festival’s center for environmental education. Centrally located near the food vendors, the Sustainability Pavilion, built by festival volunteers as a live example of sustainable living techniques, will host multiple forums and demonstrations throughout the weekend. Here is a brief description of events:
Friday, 1pm – Central Carolina Community College’s Green Building Program will be hosting an interactive forum discussing green building technology. Discussion will involve the use of renewable resources and materials in building design and renovation.
Saturday 1pm – Regional Capacity- Maintaining Natural Resources as Natural Assets for a Sustainable Future. Pierre Lauffer will be conducting a group discussion on maintaining regional natural resource capacity in face of community growth and development. Pierre is seeking to help change the way regions and communities develop and the way people see resource usage within the communal context.
Saturday, 2:30pm – Sustainability and ecology as spiritual practice of love and reverence. Leif Diamant will facilitate this exploration through conversation on how living in harmony with nature cultivates wisdom, compassion, and happiness in all of us.
This season’s exhibits in the Sustainability Pavilion will cover:
Agriculture. With friends from Chatham Marketplace, dedicated to strengthening the health and well-being of their owners and their community and Carolina Farm Stewardship Association whose mission is to support and expand local and organic agriculture in the Carolinas by inspiring, educating and organizing farmers and consumers.
Education. With friends from Central Carolina Community College, Pittsboro Campus, home of the bio-fuels program, sustainable agriculture curriculum and a new green building program as well as The Haw River Assembly, a non-profit citizens’ group founded in 1982 to restore and protect the Haw River and Jordan Lake.
Energy. With friends from Honey Electric Solar which specializes in sales and installations of solar systems – thermal & electric – in North Carolina and Piedmont Biofuels Coop who will do a “cooking show” (mason jar bio-diesel demo and question-and-answer session).
Sustainable Lifestyle. With friends from The Abundance Foundation which turns renewable energy and sustainable concepts such as waste reduction and lowering emissions into reality and The Green Building Council of the Home Builders Association who are incorporating green features and techniques into traditional subdivision homes that represent a wide range of styles and prices.
The program for the Sustainability Fair offers these words, “As the many facets of ‘sustainability’ come into focus – be it organic agriculture, Bio-fuels, Solar, wind power, etc. – we see there is a link and common thread uniting to create a movement. It all starts with an awakening realization that the Earth and its resources are not at all infinite but very clearly are finite, limited and possibly near exhaustion. The key to sustainability is to live in harmony with nature, to use our creativity wisely and to share in the abundance of our home, the planet Earth.”
Education is one of the many facets of the Shakori Hills Festival of Music and Dance, but there are many more. There are continuous children’s activities, spectacular gourmet food vendors, local artisan crafts, healing arts opportunities, and of course, music and dance! Featured performers are Arrested Development, Richie Havens, Donna the Buffalo, Justin Townes Earle, Chatham County Line, Big Fat Gap, Keith Frank and the Soileau Zydeco Band, Tres Chicas, and The Hackensaw Boys. See full musical schedule and all details at www.shakorihills.org.
Online press kit at www.shakorihills.org/press.
