The Harambee Harvest Festival took place October 15 and 16, 2010 in and near the Cordell Reed Student Union and also in the parking lot behind. The festival took place from 9am to 6pm on Friday and 10am to 8pm on Saturday. The festival was intended to bring cultural awareness to the campus of Chicago State University. Honoring cultural identity which can be seen throughout the architecture of the Student Union Building is why Chicago State University is an honorary historically black university.
The festival brought the city’s south side farmers selling fresh vegetables and other produce, but there were so few! Is it that hard to find black farmers? If the committee in charge tries harder to connect with the community they might have had a larger turnout for both the vendors and the visitors. Vendors selling various merchandise set up tables on the quadrangle adjacent to the cafeteria for the second day of the festival. However very few actually represented any culture with the items sold. Many vendors were selling item crafted to be “cultural” but were things massively produced in India and China! Where is the jury that weighs the vendors sell list to prevent vendors selling items that are completely contradicting the point of the festival?
Many visitors of the festival were extremely pleased by what was on display and were moved by the music but all seemed to agree that the potential of the festival was endless and should be improved for next year. “There was some confusion about the festival dates due to faulty information”, the Office of Media and Events explained. Many students of the university had no idea about the festival, which made turnout low and many expressed disdain for the handling of the distribution of information regarding the festival. There was also no communication in the community that surrounds the campus. None of the alumni were informed. There were no flyers in gas stations, grocery stores, or the bulletins of surrounding churches. This is the major contributing factor as to why the festival ended early on Saturday somewhere around six instead of the documented eight.
Another festival in Chicago that celebrates the cultures represented in the student body of Chicago State University is the African Festival of the Arts that happens every Labor Day weekend in the city’s beautiful Washington Park. This festival in its beginning was very small and somewhat unorganized like the Harambee Harvest Festival but through many years of trial and error it is now an internationally recognized festival. Some will agree that with more work and dedication CSU can also be the host of a major festival since celebration of both the culture of the students and residents of the south side can and will bring unity in to the community. With expressions of culture Blacks who have a very limited view of their personal culture need every and any event that can showcase our culture. Other cities like Philadelphia and Washington DC do a very good job of hosting events celebrating culture. It would be wonderful to have that experience based out of my school, Chicago State University.
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