Big worries for Big Parade

Any­one who was in atten­dance for Saturday’s Big Parade would be hard pressed to call the day-long event any­thing but per­fect. Prior to the event though, the orga­niz­ers of the event were won­der­ing if there would be another.

“This might have been our biggest parade, to date,” said James Peake, one of the orga­niz­ers of the Big Parade. “It seems to grow more and more every year we have it.”

Up until Sat­ur­day morn­ing though, Peake and Laura Dahle, another orga­nizer of the parade, weren’t sure that would be the case.

“There’s this period of time where we’re not sure if any­one is going to show up for the parade,” said Peake. “It doesn’t seem like any­one is mak­ing any­thing yet. Often a lot of groups, par­tic­u­larly the col­lege stu­dents, wait until the very last minute to throw their floats together.”

The stress of orga­niz­ing such a large parade caused many of the orga­niz­ers to con­sider can­cel­ing the parade next year. After see­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion and sup­port of the com­mu­nity on Sat­ur­day though, they had a change of heart.

“Some­times all the work just falls on a few indi­vid­u­als, and the whole way through it we’re won­der­ing if we’re even going to go through with it next year, or do we want want to do this? Is it worth it?” said Peake.

“Of course after this past Sat­ur­day, and this amaz­ing event, of course it’s worth it. We’re def­i­nitely going to do it again.”

Still, Peake said he’d like to see some changes in the infra­struc­ture of plan­ning the parade, namely, actu­ally adding an infrastructure.

Peake admits this may be con­trary to what Zach Moser, one of the parade founders, had in mind when the Big Parade first started.

“I think Zach was sort of opposed to this struc­ture, this orga­ni­za­tion that has been cre­ated around this event,” Peake said. “But in order for an event like this to sus­tain itself, it needs the proper infrastructure.”

While Peake would like to see a more struc­tured way of orgainz­ing the event, he doesn’t want to get away from Big Parade’s core val­ues of being a com­mu­nity event, rather than an event put on by the city or Ober­lin Col­lege. One way he feels this could hap­pen is by more sup­port from com­mu­nity mem­bers in plan­ning and prepar­ing for the parade.

“In order for it to keep grow­ing, or at least keep the momen­tum that it has going now, we need more peo­ple to get involved,” Peake said.

Accord­ing to Peake, many orga­ni­za­tions were involved with the parade, such as Girl Scout Troop 123, Wel­come Nurs­ing Home, and Kendal. FAVA, of which Peake is the Edu­ca­tion and Out­reach Coor­di­na­tor, has also been heav­ily involved in assist­ing groups with mak­ing floats, pup­pets, and cos­tumes for the parade.

FAVA will offer pup­pet mak­ing classes to com­mu­nity mem­bers start­ing in the fall that will deal with pro­ces­sional arts.

Peake said that he and the other orga­niz­ers are already start­ing to think about next year’s parade, say­ing it’s never too early to “Think Parade.”

Posted by Scott Mahoney on May 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.