Festival of the Arts returning to downtown OKC this summertime

Even now, Dolese explained he hopes festivalgoers will be satisfied to discover some of their familiar festival favorites — from Pottery Place and the Children’s Artwork Discipline to the Sculpture Park and the 144 artist tents — even in the summertime. All accepted visual artists from the canceled 2020 festival have been invited to participate in this year’s event.

“I imagine that it truly is ideal for us to have a Competition of the Arts, and it is unlucky that we have to transfer it. But it is also pretty privileged that we get to have it at all,” Dolese stated.

Signal of normalcy

Final calendar year marked just the 2nd time the Competition of Arts has been canceled in its fifty percent-century historical past: The other was in 1995 when the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing transpired just days just before the occasion was set to start.

“Oklahoma Town without the need of the Competition of the Arts does not come to feel like Oklahoma Town — and that is between the numerous explanations that this very last yr has felt like a misplaced 12 months for quite a few of us. … The Pageant of the Arts is a key cultural celebration in our town, and its return will surely, I feel, bring with it a return to normalcy in our group that is incredibly welcome and pretty substantially skipped,” OKC Mayor David Holt stated.

“I belief the Oklahoma Town-County Overall health Office on these points, and I know they have been in close contact with the Pageant of the Arts and that they’re happy with the plan. It seems like it will do the job, and of study course, it will be interesting to be capable to welcome the Competition of the Arts again, albeit in a a little bit modified variety.”

With the pageant dates 6 months away and vaccine distribution under way, Holt mentioned he is self-confident that the outside celebration will be equipped to continue properly.

“It is really challenging to say that right now: I still have above 600 people today in the clinic proper now for COVID-19. … We however have some hard operate to do. We’ve obtained to get these vaccines out we have obtained to proceed to use safety measures in the meantime,” Holt informed The Oklahoman. “Nobody’s partying these days, but you can picture, realistically, a globe the place issues have returned to some semblance of normalcy, and I feel for positive, by the second half of 2021, that’s a reasonable hope.”