Did You Know Bangor Has Been Having A Curbside Art Crawl?

No doubt lately, it seems the news is constantly dominated by things that have been completely upended by COVID-19. Schools, businesses, churches, bars, concert venues... all closed up tight. And worse, some may not return when it's all over. But, every now and then, folks innovate and and adapt.

Such is the case with an art festival that was to be held downtown in June. When the virus caught deep hold on the community, the festival was canceled. But lots of local Bangor businesses decided that just wasn't going to cut it. So what could they do? Obviously, it could be done virtually, but folks took this a step further.

Many of your favorite spots downtown banded together to form a Curbside Art Crawl. Some of us, ahem, older folks may have done a pub crawl or two in our day, And this isn't really much different. Many downtown business store fronts are featuring local artists in their storefront/windows.

23 different businesses are helping out with this, in an effort to help out the local arts community. There's a list here, at DownTownBangor.com. In addition, there's an interactive map, so if there's a business you're looking for and can't quite remember where it is, this will show you. As well as being able to easily see all the other businesses participating.

Betsy Lundy, Downtown Coordinator for Bangor, said this to WABI - TV5:

There's this creative community that exists here without an opportunity to express their creativity or share their creativity with their community and having the curbside art crawl helps the arts scene moving forward, helps keep it relevant and provides people something to do when a lot of the programming has been cut.

Hopefully, for some folks, this can help take the sting out of the festival being canceled. And, talk about having a gorgeous downtown! Pretty much every business window you turn to will have awesome local art hanging in it. That's definitely not a bad thing. So maybe take a walk downtown this weekend and check it out. You must be tired of being home by now anyway, right?