Centerfest

What it is:  There are some great festivals in Durham throughout the year.  However, Centerfest, which occurs every year in September, is always one of our favorites.  It's an arts festival to celebrate local artist both performance and visual and all of the proceeds go to help out the Durham Arts Council.  The festival took a year off to reinvent itself, but now it's back and a great family outing.

The festival takes over downtown including Main St. for a weekend and fills it with tents of artists selling their beautiful crafts from paintings of Durham to bouquets of paper flowers to wooden furniture, there is a ton to catch your eye.  

What we liked:  For the adults, it's a great chance to see some great art and have some fun shopping and taking in the sites.  For kiddos, they can be exposed to lots of great local art.  While it took them a few minutes to really stop and take a look at the art, once they did, the kids enjoyed pointing out everything new that they spotted to us.  They also had two kids areas-one where they could do art projects like maracas and masks and another where you could pay a little extra and have them on bouncy slides or ride a train.  Our kiddos had a great time creating the art themselves, but I have to say, this time we snuck them past the train and bouncy slide before they noticed.

What we would change:  The festival was a bit spread out.  I found it a bit hard to navigate and we had to backtrack a couple of times to get where we wanted to go.

Website an other important information:

Website: http://www.centerfest.durhamarts.org/

Address: Downtown Durham

Dates: September 21, 22 in 2013

Photos:

(making a maraca)

(the finished product)