Pendleton Rallies to Make Indoor Festival a Success

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

As the remnants of a hurricane threatened to soak and blow away one of Pendleton’s signature festivals, the town and the leadership at Anderson School Dist. 4 found a solution.

Moving Pendleton’s Fall Harvest Festival indoors to Riverside Middle School was a risk that paid off, turning the tide of vendor cancellations and the prospect of sparse and wet crowds. By Saturday, the only problem was parking.

Crowds arrived early and were ushered in the driving rain to the entrance of the festival by volunteers in covered golf carts that navigated the packed parking lots looking for riders. Inside more than 80 vendors filled the school hallways and gymnasium, while musicians and other groups performed in the auditorium

The festival’s rain-or-shine policy found a way around the limitations of tents in high winds at Riverside.

“It is absolutely packed,” said Pendleton Mayor Sarah Stokowski. “I’ve heard parking is limited, which is a good problem to have.”

For Stokowski, the volunteers offered an answer to a question she is often asked: What has she learned about Pendleton lately?

“Our volunteers show up,” said Stokowski. “Last weekend, they were picking up trash. This weekend, they’re here making sure people are coming in safely.”

The weather had required a change of venue. The town’s response required considerably more than finding a building.

The festival had been planned for the Village Green. But by Monday, before officials decided to relocate it, vendors were beginning to pull out.

“We kept looking at the forecast, and it wasn’t changing,” Stokowski said. “We kind of realized that we didn’t have many options.”

For Lindsey Watley, Pendleton’s community engagement manager, wind was the deciding factor against the planned outdoor event. Rain was something the festival’s existing policy anticipated. The prospect of setting up an outdoor event in the forecast winds presented another question.

There were commitments to consider as well. The town had received Anderson County Accommodations Tax funding and a South Carolina Arts Commission grant. Billboards in Asheville, North Carolina, and Columbia were inviting people to the festival. Artists, vendors and downtown merchants had planned around the day.

Watley wanted to preserve the event and avoid announcing its cancellation.

“I threw a Hail Mary to them and said, ‘I really need your support,’” she said of her appeal to Anderson School District 4.

The district responded with possibilities. An elementary school was offered. The high school was unavailable because of its homecoming dance. Riverside emerged as the solution.

For Stokowski, what mattered was not only that the district supplied a venue, but that its first response was to ask what it could do.

“I just can’t explain how appreciative I am right now,” she said.

Town Council member Nancy Von Meyer credited Watley with imagining that the festival could be moved rather than abandoned.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to Lindsey,” she said, “because it was her idea to think that we could go ahead and flip this and go from an outdoor venue to an indoor venue.”

Von Meyer also saw something fitting in the choice of building. The new Riverside occupies the former Pendleton High School, giving some visitors an opportunity to return to a place they remembered in another role.

“To be able to celebrate the new Riverside and for people to come back and see where they went to high school — how exciting is that?” she said.

A building associated with one kind of community gathering had made room for another.

Moving a festival indoors is not quite the same as moving a meeting indoors. The vendors still needed space. The performers needed somewhere to perform. Children’s activities, art demonstrations and visitors all had to fit into an arrangement that made sense.

Accommodating them in the school required organizers to reconsider the layout while trying to give each participant a fair share of the available space.

“It was extremely interesting to put everybody in the school,” Watley said. “But we worked really hard to do that and give everybody fair space.”

The school also supplied an advantage the original plan could not: a large auditorium with seating for live music. The musical lineup remained part of the festival, now with a roof overhead.

Watley believed cancellations elsewhere may have given some visitors another reason to come. People were arriving, she said, and taking the opportunity to visit Pendleton despite the weather.

“I really worked hard to get the word out,” she said. “I’m thankful that people are coming and showing how much they love Pendleton.”

This year’s expanded arts programming survived the move as well.

The Arts Commission grant supported a larger arts component, including two demonstration areas where visitors could watch artists work in painting, jewelry and other forms.

In the gym, a 4-by-4-foot canvas offered a different kind of participation with visitors invited to leave fingerprints that would become leaves on a painted tree. An artist would finish the piece, which would later be displayed for the community.

Michaels provided children’s craft and art activities in the hallway near the auditorium. Foothills Church also offered activities for children. The festival’s parts had been redistributed through the building, but organizers had worked to keep them intact.

There was, however, something Riverside could not reproduce: the festival’s proximity to Pendleton’s downtown businesses.

Watley did not want a successful indoor event to leave those merchants out. The fall festival brings an important influx of customers, she said, and businesses had been counting on it.

Organizers planned announcements throughout the day encouraging visitors to enjoy the vendors at Riverside and then go downtown.

“They really do depend on the fall festival for a big pop of people,” Watley said.

Stokowski made the same connection, thanking residents not only for attending the festival but for supporting small businesses on downtown’s Mechanic Street.

The relocation had solved an immediate safety problem. It had not erased the festival’s larger purpose of drawing people together and bringing customers to the town’s businesses, wherever the booths happened to stand that day.

For the mayor, the decision had been difficult. Seeing the result made its purpose easier to explain.

“Days like these remind you of why you do the job,” Stokowski said. “You do the job for the community. You do the job to bring people together.”