"Everything Under the Sun" Parade
The “Everything Under the Sun” parade is a celebration of the summer solstice, community connections and the public practice of joy. In June 2024, this community-engaged street performance was the successful culmination of weeks of community outreach, public puppet-building workshops, and engaging with social infrastructure. The lead-up to the event involved multiple puppet and mask-building workshops, one offered to seniors, another for youth, and another open to the public. The parade, inspired by puppet processions like Bread and Puppet in Vermont and Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre in Minneapolis, was led by a giant paper mache sun puppet and featured puppets, costumes, and a community ukulele group and involved hundreds of participants as well as several hundred community specatator participants. The 2025 parade will build on the 2024 event through further development of the public street performance, including engagement and art-making with community groups.
In recent years, the challenges of isolation and disconnection have become more apparent, with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy identifying loneliness as a public health crisis. These issues underscore the importance of fostering community connection, which is central to this project. Through the collaborative art-making process and the culminating street performance, 'Everything Under the Sun' directly engages participants in building relationships and shared experiences. This project aims to cultivate community connections, develop large-scale puppet and mask performances with community members, and establish an ongoing street performance ritual that celebrates and makes community. By focusing on joy as a collective practice, this project aims to explore community-building as an embodied practice, one that offers a response to the growing need for meaningful social connections.
