On Oct. 4, crowds flooded into the Wayland Town Center to celebrate the first annual Wayland Festival. Various stands, activities and performances took place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., celebrating the different cultural and artistic aspects of the Wayland community.
The event was a combination of four separate festivals, including the Wayland Multicultural Festival, Arts Wayland, Touch-A-Truck and individual performances. In previous years, each of these groups have had their own, smaller celebrations, but in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the country, they decided to tie together all the events to create more community engagement.
The event kicked off with displays from Touch-A-Truck, exhibits by Arts Wayland and a marketplace from the Multicultural Festival.
Touch-A-Truck started in Wayland over 15 years ago, and used to be an independent event. Touch-A-Truck is an gathering of different types of trucks, ranging from emergency vehicles to construction trucks. Kids and families have the opportunity to go up to the vehicles and explore the inside and outside of them.
“I think a lot of people have seen us around town, but now they come up and actually feel the equipment that they see regularly throughout the town,” General Foreman Michael Wilson said.
Featured alongside Touch-A-Truck, a multicultural marketplace was set up in lieu of the Multicultural Festival.
The Wayland Multicultural Festival is a tradition started in 2022 by the Human Rights, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee (HRDEI), and has been hosted in the WHS field house since then. This year, the HRDEI combined forces with Touch-A-Truck and Arts Wayland, incorporating the festival into a wider-scale community event.
The Multicultural Marketplace featured a variety of vendors, ranging from product stands to awareness programs. The festival offered a platform for these small businesses and organizations to gain attention and help promote a deeper sense of community.
“Wayland is a relatively small town, and these are small businesses,” stand organizer Frances Pollitt said. “It’s just part of the fabric of our community, and having a multicultural aspect to it too just enriches Wayland.”
The festival strived to strengthen understanding and celebrate the diversity of the town by offering various games, displays and other activities to help exchange different cultural traditions and knowledge.
“I’ve just loved seeing all the different people from all over the world [come] together with smiles on their faces,” Pollitt said.
At 11:45 a.m., the marketplace was surrounded by a parade, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the country. The parade featured the Sudbury Company of Militia and Minute, the colonial reenactment militia unit from Sudbury. Members of the group fired muskets into the air and marched through the streets with the WHS Jazz Band following, creating a spectacle of music and sound.
The parade kicked off the beginning of performances hosted by Arts Wayland. A stage, with audio managed by audio company Audio Spectrum, was set up on the greens of the Wayland Town Center to give artists a space to perform.
Artists, such as the Dwayne Haggins band and Sway Island took the stage, creating a festive atmosphere for passerbyers. Wayland students played as well, with performances from the Honors Jazz Ensemble, 6th grader Delila Hiett and junior Maggie Agyeman. Agyeman sang the National Anthem at the end of the parade, along with singing along with the jazz band.
“This is probably one of the biggest venues I’ve been at,” Agyeman said.
Events like this are critical for small performers who want to get their name out and start to build a platform. On top of this, these events offer a space for artists to hone in on their skills and share their talents with the town, strengthening the community with their voices.
“I think that these types of opportunities really get me more comfortable on stage,” Agyeman said. “It really strengthens my stage presence and gets me more involved in the community.”
The relationship between performers and Arts Wayland is symbiotic when it comes to events like this, with both parties getting recognition and interaction from community members. These kinds of events can be breeding grounds for fundraising and attention as well.
“We really like getting people together,” CEO of Vascular Safeguard and producer of the event Christopher Reynolds said. “We find when people get together, they donate.”
With over 5000 visitors, the festival filled the Town Center with life, and it provided an outlet for town members to connect, build relationships and grow together. In a smaller town like Wayland, these kinds of interactions set the tone for how our community works together and problem solves, making it important to the overall spirit of the town.
I think it’s [community interaction] essential,” Reynolds said. “There’s glue here to get people together and address problems better.”
By providing a variety of attractions that appealed to a large crowd, the festival reigned in different people from across the town, facilitating connections that might not have happened without intervention.
“It’s very important to build that community spirit,” Police Lieutenant Mark Hebert said. “The different members of the community all have something, and the festival attracts a couple different types of crowds, bringing people together and showing them what’s going on in the community.”
The town interaction throughout the event marked a big milestone for the town center, which, according to Reynolds, is an area that’s received little community engagement within the last couple of years.
According to an anonymous source, the new owner of the town center has plans to renovate areas of the town center and strives to make it an area for more community interaction. This source also exclaimed that these plans could include new cafes, live music and an outdoor fire pit.
The success of the festival has led to definitive planning for next year, with booking endeavors already underway. The next Wayland Festival is confirmed to be hosted at the town center on Saturday, Oct. 3 of next year. According to Reynolds, community members can expect a big deal artist working the stage in 2026.
“The new owner of the town center was here today and has big plans,” the anonymous source said.
