Corn Festival

Corn Festival

DEMOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW: 

Insights:  

  • Having Bilingual support with our vendors will be tremendously important in 2024.  

  • In the write-in section of demographics, we collected data like: Mexicana, Mixed Indigenous of the Hopi Nation and Chicana, and Syrian. Identity is beautiful and complex.  

  • 43% of our vendors were based in Denver. HAFN’s outreach and presence at Denver events is extremely important.  

  • We didn’t have many attendees of the event from Denver, so perhaps having vendors do more supportive marketing campaigns in 2024 would draw a larger crowd from the city to our festival.

  • We had a well-versed range of panelists and community leaders support our event.  The programming was well attended and supportive in sharing HAFN’s work, as well as the work of BIPOC+ leaders in our regional community.  

  • Our community member, Devon Pena drove all the way from Southern Colorado to support our panel on sustainable models of water usage in agriculture.  

  • Our programming was impactful and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.  

  • We gathered a lot of unique data that we wouldn’t have captured if we did a straightforward data survey with options.

  • Our community is beautiful, diverse, powerful, and spans widely across cultures and communities. It is powerful to bring a group of people together in the way that the Corn Festival does.

  • This data capture is not all encompassing but incredibly moving to see.

  • Historically marginalized groups often feel uncomfortable sharing demographic information in this manner. A larger conversation about community support around these questions could be productive for future demographic collection.

  • We sold 153 tickets to community members in Boulder County!

Discover our panelists

Our 2023 Sponsors

  • “I also wanted to express my gratitude to you, Monserrat, and the HAFN community for bringing such an amazing event to the land and to our community. I am so grateful I was able to attend Saturday afternoon and much of Sunday for learning, community conversation, and celebration of land, food, dance, and music. It was a deeply personal experience for me. I keep telling everyone I see about it…especially all the things I learned about corn from Monserrat! Witnessing your community sharing your Aztec dance and ceremony traditions on Sunday was really amazing! A special surprise for me was reconnecting with Mario Olvera. He is such a special person. When my kids were little, they were in art classes that he offered here in Longmont that were a really positive experience for them. On Sunday, he brought such amazing truth and vulnerability to the conversation about race with Ramon. The circle conversation about reconnecting buffalo and the land was also a highlight for me. I am excited about possibilities for more collaboration. Hope to see you again soon!”

    From Justin Atherton-Wood, | Planning Group Supervisor, Boulder County Parks and Open Space

  • “The festival was so wonderful. We are glad we could make it happen on county land. The volunteers, participants, and public were a true indication of the value this celebration means to all of us. Your community is vibrant and rich, and we look forward to working more together!”

    From Therese Glowacki, Boulder County Parks & Open Space Director

  • “My family and I greatly enjoyed the Harvest festival this past weekend. It was a great event, thanks so much for having us! Can you direct me to local resources for Native Americans, regarding history, culture, anything. I'd like to present this type of information to my social work team.”

    From Matthew Spencer Blank |Human Services Case Worker, Boulder County

  • "Below is a recent blog I wrote on a hike the weekend after Corn & Water Festival that really transformed my soul. I took an 11-hr. hike, with an accidental detour to a glacier at the divide, a valley of Mother Water Lake, flowing down to the Front Range- and literally down to the ground around where we’ll plant these trees to spread LIFE all around… and then sing songs all about it…! Wow!! Our school starts our day singing songs in a circle, where everyone is equal, beginning our day in gratitude, community & connection, and HAFN, Indigenous wisdom, like Tyson Yunkaporta, Ian Sanderson, Robin Wall Kimmerer and more have shaped me over the past season of my leadership at the school, like 18 months (a toddler in the life of my journey as Leader of this school my parents built and someone else ran. It is all about relationships, which grow in the season and time of their kind, so it’s super cool to be making all these HAFN connections! We hosted Grupo Tlaloc this summer for drumming & dancing with the children- we’d love to share this experience with children in our community.

    From Amy May |Corn Festival Attendee and Donor of HAFN

Water is Life: Everywhere the Water Flows, We Can Plant a Tree to Grow…

Our own backyard here in Boulder County is the direct connection to our approach to water at Treehouse Learning and as residents of the Front Range Water Shed. At the Western Edge of the county in an area now known as the Indian Peaks Wilderness and the Continental Divide.

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