The 35th annual Wake Up the Earth Festival, organized by Spontaneous Celebrations, is scheduled for May 3 on the Southwest Corridor Park near the Stony Brook T Station.
Three parades, originating at Egleston Square, the Loring-Greenough House at 12 South St., and at Dudley Square in Roxbury, will start at 11 a.m. They will meet in Jackson Square and merge into one parade down Lamartine Street to the festival site.
According to Spontaneous Coordinator Mark Pelletier, this year’s festival will feature many acts and activities that debuted last year, including mini golf. It will also include a new after party at Spontaneous’s headquarters at 45 Danforth St., featuring house/dance/trance music.
“I’m just excited that it’ll be a nice day. I just need a fireball in the sky and I’m happy,” he told the Gazette last week. “The key to the whole thing is lots of people coming out and having a good time.”
A rain date is scheduled for the following day, May 4, if the weather is inclement.
Hyde Square restaurant The Haven will be sponsoring a hybrid Celtic/Afro band, Pelletier added.
The festival, founded in 1979 and still celebrating local activists’ victory in defeating the plan to build the I-95 highway through what is now the Southwest Corridor train line and park, features music and dance performances, and includes the Popular Theatre; the Youth, and Story Telling stages.
For more information, see spontaneouscelebrations.org.