Family fun at AS220 25th Anniversary Foo Fest 2010

Saturday, August 14, 2024
1 PM - 1 AM
Empire Street, Providence
Tickets: $5 per person.

AS220 Foo Fest returns to downtown Providence on Saturday, August 14! Foo Fest is the family event of the year not to miss and reminds parents even though we may have children we can still take part in cool fun things happening in the city of Providence. This summer celebration of Rhode Island’s vibrant arts community will once again fence off and transform Empire Street into a lively party with dancing, eating, interactive art installations, homemade games, and two dozen acts ranging from national headliners to up-and-coming local bands.

Kidoinfo sponsored last year’s event when AS220 decided to make Foo Fest more accessible to families with young children by starting earlier in the day and including special programming. We had so much fun last year we are back again this year as a proud sponsor*.

Foo Fest will include musical ensembles and activities geared toward the younger crowd throughout the afternoon, including performances by two-time Grammy Award-winning children’s entertainer Bill Harley (pictured above), indie-folk sensation Erin McKeown, Providence’s own What Cheer Brigade (pictured below), a 2nd Foo Fest appearance from Joe’s Backyard Band and fun tidbits from this year’s emcee, Keith Munslow.

Fun games and creative entertainment will be open throughout the day for all ages’ amusement courtesy of The Providence Children’s Museum, The Rhode Island Museum of Science and Art, and Kidoinfo. We will be constructing a fairy village at the Kidoinfo table. Bring your kids and enjoy the fun!

Although music and activities have been planned with families in mind these are not separate from everything else happening at Foo Fest. Families get to see, create and experience it all. Kids want to listen to music, make things and move around as much or more as the adults do. And we parents still want to feed our own creative needs. Foo Fest gets it.

In the evening, Foo Fest will get more mature with an impressive lineup of several of New England’s most popular bands including War Paint and Javelin, and national headliner ESG — the genre-defying, art-funk female ensemble from the South Bronx. We heard families last year say they wished they’d planned for an evening babysitter so they could drop the kiddos off at home and return for a date night out. Plan accordingly.

More cool stuff:

In honor of its 25^th anniversary, AS220 announces creation of the AS220 Free Culture Award — a national award bestowed every other year on an artist whose work has made a significant contribution to grassroots, participatory culture and freedom of artistic expression, and embodies AS220’s unjuried, uncensored mission and values. Contemporary artist, graphic designer and illustrator Shepard Fairey will be the inaugural recipient of the AS220 Free Culture Award at Foo Fest 2010.

Shepard is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist and commercial graphic designer who emerged from Providence’s underground arts community in the 1990’s to become the most influential street artists in the world today.

To commemorate the occasion of AS220’s 25^th anniversary and celebrate Providence’s artist community, Shepard is being commissioned to install the largest Shep Fairey mural in the world on the side facade of Trinity Rep’s Pell Chafee Auditorium in downtown Providence. How cool is that? Shep is also producing an AS220 25^th Anniversary Limited Edition Print, for sale now at www.as220.org, and at Foo Fest.

In a ceremony preceding the headline music act at Foo Fest, AS220 Artistic Director Umberto Crenca will honor Shepard for his work and present him with the one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted Free Culture Award on the Foo Fest main stage.

More reasons to love this city.

AS220’s FOO FEST 2010 Sponsors:

BIG TIME Support From: Foo’s Official Media Partner - The Providence Phoenix, Rolling Rock, 95.5 WBRU, Providence the Creative Capital & Mayor David N. Cicilline. Major Support From: Bank of America, Bank RI, Citizens Bank, Kidoinfo. Significant Support From: Durkee Brown Viveiros & Werenfels Architects, Pinpoint Studio, MetLife, Pezzuco Construction Sokoloff & Associates.

Category: activities: outdoor, baby, kids, local ri area, music, preschool, tweens