PORTSMOUTH — One of the state’s oldest settlements, a crown jewel of historic Portsmouth, will host the New England BIPOC Fest , a fusion of the culture and connectivity of the region’s Black and Indigenous people of color.
The fourth annual New England BIPOC Fest takes place Sunday at Strawbery Banke Museum after having more than doubled in size from last year’s event at Vida Cantina , a restaurant owned and operated by event co-founder, chef David Vargas. Seventy-five-plus vendors from five of the six New England states are expected to participate, according to Joanna Kelley, Portsmouth's assistant mayor and owner of Cup of Joe Café & Bar . Kelley is also a co-founder of the festival.
The festival — a combination of food, music, dancing, poetry and spoken word, retail stations and entertainment and activities for children — will be held on the museum’s lawn on Sunday, Aug. 18 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The continuing mission of the New England BIPOC Fest is to support and uplift businesses and nonprofit groups that are owned and operated by people of color, in addition to organizations that highlight people of color and serve underserved communities.
Kelley sits on the Strawbery Banke Museum board of trustees.
“One of the things we’ve talked about a lot is making sure that we are on mission with the events that we bring here, and this is on mission,” Kelley said of New England BIPOC Fest moving to Strawbery Banke.
The festival’s move to Strawbery Banke represents a crossover of the region’s Black and Indigenous people of color with the history of European settlement locally, which occurred on land once inhabited by the Abenaki people and other native populations.
Strawbery Banke was colonized in 1623, and the museum notes the Abenaki people visited the Seacoast seasonally for 12,000-plus years to fish, hunt and prepare food.
“We’re so honored and excited to host this event. It’s a natural extension of the museum’s work to share more inclusive stories,” said Veronica Lester, the museum’s director of marketing, on Thursday.
The museum will have its own table at the festival on Sunday highlighting the presence of the Abenaki people and the campus’ Penhallow House , where the Cousins family, who were Black, lived from 1937 to 1943, according to museum archaeologist Alix Martin.
A child of the Cousins family, Geraldine Palmer, grew up in the house and has partnered with Strawbery Banke to tell stories of her parents’ lives there. The museum conducted three years’ worth of archaeological work at the home.
“They weren’t alone,” Martin said of the Cousins family. “In the 1910s through the 1930s, dozens of Black families moved from various southern states to Portsmouth in the Great Migration, most of them to work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, including (Geraldine’s) dad, Kenneth.”
Strawbery Banke is currently furnishing the home to appear as it looked in the first half of the 20th century and properly convey the Cousins family’s experience with “de facto” segregation in Portsmouth after leaving the Jim Crow South, Martin added.
“I went into archaeology because I wanted to answer questions about how people lived and I realized pretty early on that the only way that was going to be valuable was if it was interesting to current people. There’s no point digging up historic trash unless it helps tell a story or makes history more tangible to people. To bring a new audience to Strawbery Banke and show how we interpret those histories, that’s the goal. I can’t wait,” Martin said of the festival.
2024 New England BIPOC Fest entertainment and food lineup
The lineup for entertainment at the festival includes former Portsmouth poet laureate Diannely Antigua , Unicorn Cove Hula Hui, Mariachi Estrellas de Boston, the Parks Taekwondo School, West African dancing and drumming and music and dancing from the Indonesia Cultural Center.
Indian, Mexican, Jamaican, Indonesian, Korean and Puerto Rican food vendors will be on hand, among others. All food vendors at the festival will be given a $500 food stipend for their participation.
A mobile science, technology, engineering and mathematics truck from the University of New Hampshire will also be on site for children, in addition to Kalamata’s Kitchen .
All New England BIPOC Fest goers will have access to the museum’s properties and vice versa on Sunday, Kelley said.
“We look sometimes at the museum as a freeze in time, but in reality these homes have been continuously occupied by different people over the hundreds of years that they've been here,” Kelley said. “Right now, we are living (what will be considered) history 50 years from now. So in 50 years, we were going to look back and be like, ‘Do you remember when they started holding the festival at the museum?’”
Festival leaders expect 3,000 to 4,000 guests to partake in the free festival on Sunday, an anticipated uptick from roughly 2,000 attendees last year. At the 2023 event, there were 32 vendors from across New England.
The event is free and open to the public with a suggested donation.
Information: newenglandbipocfest.com/
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: New England BIPOC Fest at Strawbery Banke on Sunday: What to know before you go
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