This year’s Community Days festival in Charlestown includes the usual things that make events like this special to residents: vendor booths, food trucks, games and live music. There’s a cake wheel, jump rope contest and the return of a drone show, with new designs.
Charlestown Mayor Treva Hodges said the annual festival is a good way to bring people together and celebrate the city’s small-town feel, even as its population is growing.
“We are an incredibly tight-knit community,” she said. “And even though we're growing, we want to make sure that we are creating opportunities and events for people to maintain that down home feel.”
Vendors, music and food start Saturday at 11 a.m. at the city square, with a kids’ zone running 2-9 p.m. This year’s festival kicks off Friday with a tailgate party at Ensembles, a music and art education nonprofit, ahead of the Charlestown-Providence high school football game at 7 p.m.
Hodges said she’s excited for the football season, and there’s a new energy because of the hiring this year of Charlestown alum Aaron Daniel. And partnering with Ensembles ahead of the game helps highlight the nonprofit, which started hosting tailgate parties last year, she said.
“There's just a lot of love in this community for our schools, our athletic programs, our arts programs, and we thought it was a wonderful way to tie all those things together,” she said.
Robin Embry will perform at the tailgate, with bands Arianna & The Bourbon Britches, The Swerve, The Brass Pack, Van Waylon, Ron Miller and the Roadhouse Roosters and the Jason Lee McKinney Band playing Saturday, according to a news release.
A drone show returns for the second year at 9 p.m.
“I love watching the excitement as people on site try to guess what's coming next,” Hodges said. “With a fireworks show, you get the bang and the boom and the light, but you know you're going to get a bang and boom and a light. But with this drone show, and the way that the images morph into each other and become something else, it adds that element of excitement.”
Hodges said events like this are critical to keeping the community close as the population grows. Charlestown has fewer than 9,000 residents according to a city spokesperson, but the mayor said the city is processing around 200 single family home permits each year, and new multi-family units are now leasing.
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