Fall Ushers in Season of Pendleton Festivals, Holiday Events

Downtown Pendleton is aiming to bring more community engagement and support, just as the festival and holiday season begins.

The Village Green and its new grass will be filled with activity most every weekend through the end of the year.

It kicks off Oct. 10, an expanded Fall Harvest Festival which will include expanded art offerings for local creators and those attending. The town will set up downtown Oct. 9, with the festival itself scheduled from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 10.

Lindsey Watley, Pendleton’s Community Engagement Manager, said the town is expanding the festival’s art component through partnerships, grants and a new effort to draw visitors from beyond the immediate area.

“It is a pleasure to lead that event,” Watley said. “We have so many wonderful things to announce and talk about that we’ve worked on.”

The Pendleton Art Gallery on the town square will participate in two locations: demonstrations in front of the gallery and an art tent set up on the Village Green. Michaels will provide hands-on, arts-and-crafts activities inside the tent.

The town also plans a community art project as part of the festival, and Michaels craft store has donated large canvases, and the town will work with the art gallery to create an artwork made by community members and later displayed around Pendleton.

The expanded programming is supported by a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission, and Watley said that funding allowed the town to deepen the festival’s artistic offerings.

The festival has also received Anderson County accommodations-tax (ATAX) funding, money that has helped pay for billboards in markets outside the immediate area, including Asheville and Columbia, in an effort to attract visitors to Pendleton’s art-focused festival.

“We have put up billboards throughout communities outside of our area,” Watley said. “We’re really, really super excited.”

The art tent will have a second purpose between 11:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. Oct. 10, serving as a covered dining space.

“We saw a need last year for a nice covered space for people to eat,” Watley said.

The expanded art programming gives the event something of the character of a slightly smaller version of Pendleton’s Spring Jubilee, with local artists, demonstrations, visitors making things together and a public lawn becoming an outdoor gallery.

“We amped it up this year for sure,” Watley said.

The Fall Harvest Festival will not be the only October event.

The town is also planning a community movie for Oct. 29 in collaboration with the Pendleton Area Business Association, the Pendleton Foundation for Black History and Culture, and the Pendleton History Foundation.

The partnership is intended to build on the Pendleton Area Business Association’s downtown trick-or-treat event, when families visit local merchants. Afterward, the collaborating organizations expect to host the movie at Heritage Park.

The format reflects a broader effort to connect businesses, historic organizations and family activities into a shared downtown experience.

A child may come for candy at a storefront, then cross town for a community movie.

The holiday season will begin in Pendleton on Nov. 27 with the annual Christmas tree lighting on the Village Green.

The event traditionally draws one of the town’s largest crowds, and this year’s celebration will include entertainment, downtown merchant activities and new programs intended to encourage children and families to visit local businesses.

The tree itself will look different, featuring ornaments with a new color scheme.

The tree lighting will also launch the Pendleton Christkindlmarkt Market, a seasonal market held on the Village Green, and will continue for three weekends, with vendors setting up on the Green.

This gives Pendleton’s holiday programming a rhythm beyond a single ceremonial night: lights go on, vendors arrive, residents return and the Green remains active as Christmas approaches.

Then comes Pendleton’s Christmas parade, scheduled for Sunday, Dec. 6.

Watley said last year’s parade drew strong participation and a large crowd, and the town expects another successful event this year.

The fall-to-winter schedule is more than a series of dates. It is part of Pendleton’s evolving approach to community identity, downtown commerce and public space.

The town is also working with a branding firm on a larger branding project, which Watley described as an effort to listen to Pendleton residents and establish a common voice for marketing, events and promotion.

The work aims to guide the town’s visual identity, website appearance, imagery, colors and general approach to communicating with residents and visitors.

“It basically casts a vision and a voice for who we are in Pendleton,” Watley said. “How we speak when we market and do events, what the website looks like, the imagery, the colors.”

The result, she said, will provide a shared direction across town departments: a public understanding of what Pendleton is, informed by community input, and an idea of what it hopes to become.

Grace Friar, is Pendleton’s new Main Street and Downtown Engagement Coordinator, will be part of this effort and is making the rounds to downtown businesses to explain her mission, which she said is to “help existing businesses thrive, encourage new ones to come downtown, strengthen community ties and bring new life to the historic commercial district.”

The events on the Village Green are part of that vision, and Friar’s new Main Street role is expected to deepen their connection to downtown merchants. Watley said the two will work closely together, particularly on events that happen in the town center.

“Grace will be a great component of those events,” Watley said. “Here on the Green, Grace will have a touch in all of those events for sure.”

“This is only day three on the job,” Friar said. “We’re just trying to figure it out as we go.”

It is an honest beginning for a job built around listening, said Friar, who is enjoying meeting merchants face to face, and learning what businesses need before proposing solutions.

The town’s Main Street program is part of a nationwide downtown-revitalization model, with a South Carolina division and an emphasis on strengthening local commerce while preserving the historic character of town centers. Pendleton intends to form a Main Street board to provide continuing ideas, support and direction as the program grows.

“It’s something new, something that we’re super excited about,” Friar said. “This is my town that I love to support.”

Her early vision centers on the way Pendleton’s businesses and residents support one another. The town’s commercial district has the scale of a place where owners know their customers, customers recognize the people behind the counter and public events can bring a large share of the community into the same few blocks.

“I love the community aspect of downtown Pendleton,” Friar said. “I love being able to just see all of the small businesses be able to support each other, and then the community come in and support them as well.”

Friar said she would focus on enlivening public spaces — including a downtown courtyard that could become a place for people to linger — while helping merchants reach their own goals.

“I would love to liven up the different areas,” she said. “We have a courtyard here that would be a great space for people to be able to hang out and just make it a little bit prettier.”

The goal is not simply decoration but a larger work of turning a downtown into a place people use rather than merely pass through.

The Village Green will be central to that work. Friar said it provides a space where residents can meet, mingle and build the casual familiarity that makes a small town feel like a community.

“That’s a space, especially with the tree lighting coming up, that everyone in our community can come and get to know each other and mingle and hang out,” she said.

Friar will organize volunteers and help coordinate events, including this fall’s festival programming and the town’s holiday season.

For now, though, the season belongs to the immediate calendar: art tents in October, trick-or-treating and a movie near Halloween, the first lights of Christmas in November, market tents through the holidays and a parade in December. On the Village Green, a new lawn is waiting.