Candi Graves grew up going to Sellersburg Celebrates, a community festival in her hometown. A few years ago, she found a memento of those early years: a photo of her as a child in one of the T-shirts they used to give away.
She’s now volunteered to help put the annual event on for more than a decade, and this year she’s serving as the festival president. Graves said although it’s evolved, and even as the town continues to grow, the festival always holds the same feeling as it did long ago.
“The culture of the festival and what it feels like it has remained over the years,” she said. “You still feel that small-town feel when you go in, you still get that fellowship of the community that you have. That's always remained.”
The festival kicks off Saturday morning with a 5K run/walk hosted by local business Soul Fitt, and a kids’ half-mile dash. The main events run from Aug. 22-24, including a parade, balloon glow, car show and more than 200 booths.
There will be a children’s pageant, and a baking contest for kids and adults that Graves recently brought back in honor of her mother, Karen Flick. The two of them participated in the baking contests when Graves was younger.
“There's a lot of learning that goes into baking,” she said. “You have to know your conversions, you're doing math when you're doing it… [it’s] just something fun for the kids to do so they can have similar experiences.”
American Idol finalist Kennedy Reid, who grew up in the area, is slated to perform, as well as the band Operation Loud Mouth and others.
The all-volunteer event started in 1990 as a way to celebrate the town’s centennial. But it recently faced operational challenges that threatened to end the community festival.
Following the 2022 festival, leadership was unsure about continuing the event. Volunteer numbers had dwindled to a handful, and sponsorships were down.
“Something like a town festival takes a lot of people to help organize and plan,” Graves said. “And especially if nobody's paid, then…that can be difficult finding volunteers for that too.”
But Graves, who was at the time the president-elect for the following year, didn’t want to see it die.
“We all really rallied together to try to make the festival happen and see what we could do,” she said. “I think it gave us all that jolt or that wake up that we needed to say, ‘You know, things have been running, we’ve been making it happen, but at what cost? We need to make this better.’”
A local media story helped get the word out that the festival needed support. Graves also rewrote the bylaws to restructure how the festival operates, which she said helped with recruiting volunteers.
Graves said the fact that the festival’s been led solely by volunteers for more than 30 years also makes it special.
“It just kind of shows how the community does really come together,” she said.
For more information, visit sellersburgcelebrates.org.
Coverage of Southern Indiana is funded, in part, by Samtec Inc., the Hazel & Walter T. Bales Foundation, and the Caesars Foundation of Floyd County.
