People from all over the states gathered in Ely’s Whiteside Park for the 44th Annual Blueberry Arts Festival. This year was the biggest Blueberry Festival yet.

Every last week in July, the Blueberry Arts Festival fills the streets of Ely. As Kristen, one of the event coordinators, shares with us about the growth of the event.
“It’s a wonderful festival that started many years ago started on a street with just a couple of vendors and now we have grown to 240 vendors plus a full food court and spending over three days.”

Festival Growth

Kristen continued to share about the growth throughout the years. “This is the largest we have been in nine years, and we still have a little more room that we can possibly grow”

“We keep adding new vendors the ones that have those unique one-of-a-kind items that we can’t find anywhere, and we keep it a true art and craft. These people that are here these vendors they are making these items themselves their blood sweat and tears are going into them.”

Operation Blueberry

And this festival in not only contained to the Whiteside Park, as Ely’s Chamber of Commerce helps organize the event and has been working with businesses in the area for Operation Blueberry.

Operation Blueberry is a project where business help support the local art and craft community with displaying blueberry themed items or promoting the artists. Eva Sebesta, Ely’s Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, expanded on the operation.

“Businesses dressed up their stores and did window displays and had all different kinds of offerings from music to book signings and things like that featured artists and so that became part of an ancillary event that we’ve incorporated into the festival once we were able to do them in 2021.”

“Last year we began collecting economic data from the vendors and vendors spent approximately $135,000 coming to the festival so that’s what they left in our community which has waves across all of the retail services lodging and things like that.”

Economy

This festival also helps support the economy of the community, as Eva expresses the changes they have noticed in their research over the years.

“Last year we began collecting economic data from the vendors and vendors spent approximately 135,000 coming to the festival so that’s what they left in our community which has waves across all of the retail services lodging and things like that.”

“With groups of about 35 to 45,000 that are coming to the community how much they’re leaving within the festival and then also going to those restaurants but it’s a huge impact and it’s one of the busiest weekends for our community and everybody is just always prepared.”

Opportunity Ahead

Next Blueberry Arts Festival will happen once again on the last full weekend of July. And for those interested in becoming an art vendor themselves, they have applications open in November through the Ely’s Chamber of Commerce.

“Right around November we have our applications open up and we are a juried event, so we have local artists and crafters that review all the applications that come in and that 2025”

“Well, we open up to all of the existing vendors they start getting the application material in late December early January and then they have until March 15th to get their applications in and then we start filling empty booth spaces after that so any anytime people want to get that application in then we can start looking at what they produce.”

They also have another festival happening in September,

“Let’s see if you don’t like the big crowds, we do have another festival in September it’s the first full weekend in September and it’s about half the size, but we have a lot of fun wonderful vendors are here in blueberries that will be back in for our harvest moon.”