Export’s Ethnic Food & Music Fest a go; Delmont’s Apple’n Arts Festival, Pilgrimage canceled
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In a season of cancellations, Export’s annual Ethnic Food & Music Festival is sticking to its guns and will go on this weekend. The event is set for noon to 9 p.m. Saturday along Washington Avenue.
Councilwoman Melanie Litz said the relatively small size of both the borough and festival gives them an advantage.
“I think the general openness of the area lends itself to appropriate social distancing,” Litz said. “We only have half the vendors this year, which allows us to space them out even farther.”
The borough will supply hand-washing and sanitizing stations, “and generally ask people to use common sense,” Litz said.
This year’s festival will be focused on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The afternoon will include a 3 p.m. groundbreaking for the area where borough officials plan to relocate the town’s granite war memorial, and World War II-era planes from the Tri-State Warbird Museum in Ohio will perform a 3:15 p.m. flyover.
After considering a variety of alternative scenarios, both major events at Delmont’s Shields Farm — the Apple’n Arts Festival in the fall and the Delmont Pilgrimage in December — have been canceled.
Apple’n Arts officials explored scaling back the festival, which regularly draws thousands to the 1-square-mile borough over the course of an October weekend.
“We planned to scale back vendors, we canceled all of entertainment, there wouldn’t be a petting zoo,” festival president Lance Holt told Delmont council members, many of whom had concerns about maintaining health and safety.
Festival board member Brandy Walters said planning will begin now for next year’s festival, scheduled for Oct. 2-3, 2021.
The Delmont Pilgrimage allows visitors to walk through a re-creation of the Christmas story, told through living scenes with volunteer actors. It also typically includes shuttle buses running to local churches hosting Christmas-themed events.
In fact, the regular shuttle busing for both events was a big factor in both groups’ decision to cancel.
“We couldn’t figure out, with the buses, how we were going to sanitize them,” Pilgrimage president Denni Grassel said. “And the churches I had contacted, the majority of them were not in support of having it.”
Grassel said pilgrimage committee members also did not feel comfortable asking local businesses for sponsorships, given the sharp economic downturn due to the covid-19 pandemic.
“We looked at a bunch of alternatives,” she said. “Should we close Greensburg Street, should we go to a mega-church? We considered doing it virtually, but you really lose something about the experience that way.”
Shifting to a virtual format has become a popular alternative for many events, according to Laurel Highlands Visitors’ Bureau Executive Director Ann Nemanic.
“What we’ve found is that the festivals are being creative,” Nemanic said. “Fort Ligonier Days is doing a virtual event during the days the festival would be taking place. It will include videos of past parades, it will have links to the crafters who are always there, so people can reach out to them to purchase something. They’ll also have links to all of the merchants in Ligonier itself.”
Summer and fall festivals are traditionally the anchor for the bureau’s marketing initiatives, and Nemanic said they’ll be adjusting as well.
“We’ll be highlighting driving excursions for visitors coming to the region,” she said. “We’ll show them where to go to enjoy fall foliage, we’ll show them where there are corn mazes and other great ideas for driving destinations.”