Fall Creek Falls State Park will host Arts and Preservation Day Saturday to showcase the cultural history and traditional arts of the Upper Cumberland.
Park Ranger Matt Brown helped organize the event to highlight the historical past of the area. Brown said the demonstrations will begin at the park’s Nature Center and feature both indoor and outdoor activities.
“This was an opportunity for us to expand an already existing program and and work in some classes on the traditional arts that we’ve been working on throughout the year and and to kind of combine some of the cultural and natural aspects of the of the park and the park history into one event and one day to I guess kind of get everybody excited about coming to Fall Creek Falls throughout the year for some of these other events that we do,” Brown said.
The event begins Saturday at 9am. Attendees will see blacksmithing, log hewing and chair caning outside the facility. Inside the building, visitors can watch spinning demonstrations and quilting, while live music plays in both areas.
“When the guest shows up they’re going to be able to see a variety of different cultural aspects of the park and and of the park life from the historical past,” Brown said. “And so that’s going to be the primary focus of the day, we will also have some natural resource angled programs going on as well.”
Organizers focused on building a sense of community by encouraging people to develop their art skills. The park hopes to form small groups that practice these traditional activities together on a regular basis.
“Well, one of the things that we focused on when we started putting this event and the classes together that we’ve been doing is building that that sense of community within our community and getting people to focus on their their art skills and that sort of thing and to build small groups that are interested in doing these sorts of things on a regular basis together, kind of binds the community a little bit,” Brown said.
Brown will personally demonstrate fiber arts and spinning during the event. Another park ranger will lead the wood hewing demonstrations to show visitors the staff in action.
“If you want to come out and see some of the other stuff though we’ve got some as I said blacksmithing and chair caning and all that good stuff, quilting, those sorts of things too, anything to float your boat there,” Brown said.
The park encourages anyone interested in learning more about these traditional skills to attend the event and explore future educational classes offered throughout the year.