With more than a week to reflect on the 44th annual Farm-City Days celebration, organizers won’t take long to determine what changes they’ll make in 2016 and beyond.
Aaron Franklin, committee president, said that while the newly formed committee has much to be proud of, members already are eager to find ways to improve for future festivals.
The committee met last week to reflect on their successes, while noting what they’d like to see different next year.
All 11 members of the committee signed on in late March, but didn’t do much in terms of planning specific events until summer arrived.
“For one thing, we’ll have a full year to work on it,” Franklin said. “Other than having some college kids help, it was pretty much all 11 of us running everything.”
While some of the committee members had helped with other festivals, none had run a full-fledged celebration on their own before, Franklin noted.
“It’s hard to create volunteer rolls when you don’t know what you’re asking the volunteers to do,” he said. “Now we have a good idea of where we need more help, and we can actually give directions. A year of experience is going to help.”
Franklin envisions a handful of changes for next year’s festival, including a “cultural shift” to integrate more arts and crafts into the mix. He’s also eager to see the Farm-City Days music shows continue to grow in popularity, to the point that nationally known artists are brought in.
“That may be down the road,” he said.
Franklin also hopes to develop a “battle of the bands,” featuring area high school marching bands.
“Marching bands are always popular,” he noted, none moreso than Iola High’s award-winning group of student musicians. “Wouldn’t it be cool to get 10 or 15 bands to perform on the lawn? We want to make that happen.”
That leads to perhaps the biggest change the committee is considering: moving the festival up a month to some time in September.
While nothing is set in stone, Franklin said the committee hopes to decide within the next month whether the 2016 edition will be held in September.
“We know we got lucky with the weather this year, with temperatures in the 60s and 70s,” Franklin said. “We also know it gets pretty cold at night in October.
“But before we make any commitment, we want to be diligent and do research,” he continued. “We want to take everything into consideration. We would like to hear feedback from people what they think about Artist Alley (in Chanute), Cornstock (in Garnett) or are involved with other events in September. We’re going to check with high school bandleaders to see if their schedules are more flexible in September.”
Other changes, such as rerouting the parade, and bumping it up from 1 p.m. to 11 a.m. also went well, Franklin said.
Having the parade earlier in the day freed up festival-goers to visit food booths at about lunch time, “which was our goal all along. By the time the parade was over, people were hungry, so they went to the food booths,” he said. “If they’re hungry at 2 or 3 p.m., they are more likely to go home instead.”
The committee also changed the layout of the food and arts and craft booths slightly, by pointing the food booths inward, so that folks could order their meals from the courthouse lawn, not the sidewalk.”
The slight adjustment freed up the sidewalks for others to pass by seamlessly.
“It made it a lot less congested,” Franklin said.
THIS YEAR’S new events drew varying degrees of praise, he said, including the popular medallion hunt, held about two weeks prior to the festival starting.
“We had a good idea that it would be an energizer, but you never know,” he said. “Our goal was to make a little money with it, and to get the town talking about Farm-City Days well in advance. And it served its purpose. It got people excited about it. The most exciting thing for us was it got people working with their family and friends. Lots of people were talking about it.”
Franklin’s one regret: “I wished it wasn’t found so quickly. I was hoping it’d take most of the week so that the excitement could really build.”
The medallion was found after the third of eight clues was released.
“The hunt was so successful that we briefly considered doing another mini-medallion hunt that Saturday, or maybe during the farm tour. But we don’t want the novelty to wear off, so we’ll just stick with one a year. We’re pretty excited about it. We think it’ll be a staple for future celebrations.”
ORGANIZERS sought to make the festival one with “something for everyone” regardless of age or interests.
By and large, mission accomplished, Franklin said.
“It was exciting getting to hear from people who said their kids were able to do six or seven things that week, from seeing ‘The Lego Movie’ to doing the chalk art contest. That was our goal.”
Franklin also lauded the Iola Kiwanis Club, which took the reins of the annual car show.
“It was good getting the cars back on the lawn,” instead of parked along West Street, Franklin said. “I think that’s where the car owners liked to be all along. It brought everything in closer to a centralized location. The car show was a success, and the Kiwanis club deserves a lot of kudos. I haven’t counted the cars or anything, but it seemed like the car show was bigger this year.”
Likewise, Franklin heaped praise on Steve Strickler and Harry Clubine, who fixed up Strickler’s Dairy for the farm tour portion, complete with games, exhibits and a square dance.
“We don’t want to shut out other farmers if they’d like to do something, but Steve and Harry put in a ton of work. They did an excellent job.”
