“Brite” perhaps isn’t a word normally used to describe winter in Cleveland, yet a group of local artists an musicians have gather the past three years to put on the Brite Winter Festival to bring some light to the grey, gloomy Cleveland winter.
This year the festival will be held in Ohio City, famous for Great Lakes Brewing Company and an eclectic community. The festival will include an outdoor stage, bonfires, participatory art projects, light art installations, quirky games, and, of course, many food vendors. Neighborhood businesses have contributed much time, space, and talent to extend the number of venues, displays, programs, performances, and activities available this year.
Musical performances will include performances on an outdoor stage, in block party style with bonfires to keep festival-goers more comfortable, from 5-10 PM, as well as performances at 8 other venues in the area including the Garage Bar, Great Lakes Brewing Company, Market Avenue Wine Bar, Dragonfly Lounge, and more. The music programming has been created and organized by the Brite Winter Steering Committee with assistance from Bad Racket Recording Studio, The Grog Shop and The Beachland Ballroom.
The festival will also feature various participatory art and games, as well as a number of visual displays. Just a few games that will be offered include a box truck light and sound extravaganza, the smashdown game, giant skee-ball, giant snowflake, and bring-your-own lamp light sculpture. Kasumi, one of the featured artists, will display her video art, “Mid-winter’s Stereopticon”. Over a dozen artists, engineers, and creative groups are working together with support from General Electric Lighting, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art Department of Community Arts, IngenuityFest, and Vertical Sound to create these art/activity installations for the festival.
Brite Winter Festival is run by a 100% volunteer steering committee, without grant funding, and is supported by in-kind donations and sponsorships from Cleveland businesses, organizations, and university student groups. Donations of all kinds are accepted through the Ohio City Inc. Development Corporation, the festival’s non-profit fiscal agent.
Thomas Wolf, one of the organizers of the event, reports that “Brite Winter was conceptualized in 2009, two Case Western graduate students, Jimmy Harris and Emily Hornack, recognized that summer in Cleveland was awesome, better than summer in any other city they'd lived in. They also recognized that winter in Cleveland (at the time) was challenging for most people, and a combination of circumstances lead to a contagiously doldrum attitude lingering around the region between New Years and St. Patrick's Day. They wanted to do something about those doldrums... part of the solution was called Brite Winter Festival.
Winter is full of opportunity, IF we embrace it, and celebrate it rather than tolerate it. Winter in Cleveland can be amazing if we choose for it to be... That was the idea. Brite Winter Festival is now in it's third year. Due to steady increases in sponsorship and public support, there is more than 8 times the amount of free public programming as the first Brite WInter Festival, 4 times as much as the second.”
When asked what makes the festival so unique, Thomas explained:
“Lights. So many lights. GE lighting heard our call to make winter brighter, and donated thousands of lights for our installation artist's to use to create an incredible outdoor landscape. The talent level is unreal, Brite Winter will always have it's fair share of janky, quirky fun games to play... but the Artists creating the light displays are among the most well respected in the Northeast Ohio, from faculty members from CIA, and the Cleveland Museum of Art's Community Art Department and many more....This entire event is free, for the community, by the community...It may or may not be snowy an cold. It's winter time in Cleveland, and we're playing outside like it's July.”
Thomas also explained what will be new to the festival this year:
“We've moved from the flats to Ohio City, with new sponsors including GE Lighting, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cargill, Bad Racket, and the Grog Shop. There are 21 businesses in Ohio City actively participating in Brite Winter Festival, 7 are hosting music. There will be much more music, with 8 venues and 40 bands, almost 4 times the amount we had last year.”
The Brite Winter festival will be held Saturday, February 18, 2012 from 5-10pm in Ohio City at W26th and Bridge Ave, and entrance is free and open to the public. For additional details, visit the festivals site at http://www.britewintercleveland.com.
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