GREENSBORO — After the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the 2020 N.C. Folk Festival to go virtual, the festival hopes and plans for an in-person event this year.
“We’re remaining nimble and will adjust as the public health crisis progresses,” said Amy Grossmann, the festival’s president and chief executive officer.
The fourth annual N.C. Folk Festival is scheduled for Sept. 10-12.
The free outdoor multicultural festival typically fills downtown streets with live music, food, arts and crafts on the weekend after Labor Day.
It spun out of the National Folk Festival’s three-year residency in the city from 2015-2017.
The 2019 N.C. Folk Festival featured 106 performances and workshops by more than 45 artists at five outdoor and nine indoor venues, attracting about 156,000 people to center city.
But for 2020, festival planners concluded that they could not create the usual in-person event downtown safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic had canceled events worldwide and prompted statewide restrictions on large crowds.
So the festival streamed locally pre-recorded live performances online for three days in September 2020.
For this year, Grossmann hopes and plans for a live, in-person festival.