Weather muzzles cries of `Play ball!'

KENT -- The city is bidding a ``faire-thee-well'' to the Canterbury Arts Festival.

After 19 years of Canterbury celebrations, featuring music, arts and a recreation of a medieval village, the city is dropping the annual August event after several years of decreasing attendance.

The festival, commonly known as the Canterbury Faire, also featured arts and crafts vendors, a juried arts show and a wide range of performances highlighting the community's cultural diversity.

Those features of Canterbury will now be included in Kent Cornucopia Days in July, the city's other major community festival, but there will be no more medieval or Renaissance village.

The decision by the Kent Arts Commission and city officials to cancel Canterbury followed a steady decline in visitors after a large Renaissance festival with medieval reenactments began several years ago in Gig Harbor during the same weekend as Kent's event.

And it also seemed as though Canterbury, as it evolved over nearly two decades, had run its course, said Ronda Billerbeck, the city's cultural programs manager. ``It was becoming an unusual combination, a medieval fair and the arts,'' Billerbeck said.

The Kent Canterbury festival began as a nod to the city's namesake, that other Kent in Canterbury, England. A featured attraction has been the medieval and Renaissance village hosted by costumed members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group whose members preserve pre-17th century English culture.

At the same time, the three-day Canterbury festival has offered arts and performances reflecting the community's increasingly diverse cultural heritage. Groups performing last year included Scottish bagpipers; Irish clog dancers; a Mexican mariachi band; and East African, Latino and Irish music performers.

The Kent Lions Club, which organizes the annual Kent Cornucopia Days, will be working with city staff to bring a diversity of music and other arts to its annual festival, scheduled for July 14-17 in the downtown area.

Bill Westcott, a Lions club member and director of the Cornucopia festival, said there will be two stages for entertainment, one at the Kent Regional Library and the other on the plaza in front of the AMC theaters at the new Kent Station complex.

The juried arts show will move to the Green River Community College branch campus at Kent Station, and the vendors who offered hand-crafted crafts and artworks at Canterbury can join other vendors at Cornucopia's street fair, Westcott said.

``As the years go by, we'll be adding more and more,'' Westcott said.

The arts from the Canterbury event might turn out to be ``a better fit'' for Kent Cornucopia Days, which offers a wide range of events for the community, Billerbeck said.

Cornucopia also features a parade tied to the annual Seafair celebrations, a carnival, dragon boat races at Lake Meridian Park and other events, she said.

Bruce Rommel can be reached at bruce.rommel @kingcountyjournal.com or 253-872-6722.

DECLINING ATTENDANCE

Estimated attendance at Canterbury Arts Festival's weekends, based largely on sales of $1 buttons for admittance:

* 2001 -- 11,300

* 2002 -- 10,200

* 2003 -- 6,800*

* 2004 -- 4,000**

* 2005 -- 4,600

* The year another Renaissance festival opened in Gig Harbor on the same weekend.

** The year it rained all weekend.