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YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown State University's Summer Festival of the Arts will return for 2021 to a new location.
The arts and culture festival, which started on campus in 1999 and was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will take place July 17-18 and move to Wean Park between the Covelli Centre and the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre. It will remain a free event.
"We're excited to bring this nationally recognized annual event to this new community park along the Mahoning River," YSU President Jim Tressel said during a news conference Monday. "We're hopeful this move will help further grow the festival, and it will also help introduce the community to this beautiful new downtown recreation area."
Afterward, Tressel said the festival didn't have room to grow on campus.
"It was awfully tight. It couldn't get much bigger," he said. "Then comes the pandemic. You need more space to social distance. We're improving on the pandemic, but we won't be done with it by July. We'll be better, but we won't be done with it. This to me is the perfect way to safely grow the festival of the arts."
Eric Ryan, whose JAC Management Group operates the arena, the amphitheater and the park, said, "When we first envisioned Wean Park and Huntington Community Alley, we really talked about arts and culture, diversity and inclusion, ways to bring the community together. … This event encapsulates all of that."
As in the past, the event will include a juried artist market, live entertainment, children's activities and ethnic / cultural performances and food vendors.
Lori A. Factor, director of the festival, said more than 60 artists applied for consideration for the 2020 event before it was canceled. Emails already have been sent to those artists to gauge interest for 2021, and additional applications will be accepted.
Over the years, other events have filled the weekend, include jazz and gospel concerts. Those events took place originally in Youngstown's Central Square before moving to the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre in 2019. Ryan said plans are to bring those events back for 2021.
"We're in the process of working on that," Ryan said. "We hope to have that be a part of it as it's always been. Obviously with the restrictions right now at 30 percent (of capacity), it makes it difficult to bring in a bigger name. We're going to watch those numbers, but we have some tentative things booked. We'll see how it goes the next 60 days or so."
Ryan said they're still plotting out how the space will be used for the festival. Both the arena and the amphitheater will be open during the event, so attendees will be able to use the bathrooms at both venues and portable toilets won't be needed.