07/29/2024
MAMAW Festival: Mountains of Appalachia Music, Arts, and Wellness Festival was such a special day. On July 27th, 2024 Harlan County hosted the first ever MAMAW fest in collaboration with the One Nation One project's Arts for EveryBody campaign. This campaign invites us to talk about how art can make an amazing impact on our physical and mental well-being. We have learned first hand through preparation of this event how making art and building community has made us thrive. We are so proud of each person who helped make this happen and supported us.
Arts For EveryBody goal has been that on July 27, 2024, artists, civic leaders, and community health providers in 18 cities and towns across America simultaneously premiered an array of large-scale participatory art projects which drew on the sounds, styles, and stories of their communities to answer the prompt “No place like home.”
Higher Ground as the artists partnered with Dan Mosley our County Judge Executive as our civic leader, and Clover Fork Clinic of Evarts and Harlan as our Healthcare provider to put on this amazing festival and positively impact our community.
In big cities and rural counties, hundreds of actors, muralists, poets, folk dancers, circus clowns, farmers, flower artists, skaters, cooks, architects, DJs, puppeteers, nurses, mariachi players, bamboo weavers and more took the time to create new works that show the world where they come from. The result will be a celebration of American pluralism–of unity through diversity. From Seattle to Gainesville, from Providence to Honolulu, it will be an outpouring of local joy.
