Parade

HONK! Promotional Image by The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research
Greetings, Participants in the 2011 Honk Parade!

Thank you for your energy, generosity, spirit, and intellects directed towards making the 2011 Honk! Parade a spectacular event of processional theater and an essential element of the Honk! Festival, as we Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet and collectively expound upon this year’s theme: Share.
See below for a list of community groups and bands taking part.  
If you are planning to be in the parade and don’t see your name on the list, or if you see your name on the list but cannot help us with the parade this year, please email us–that information will help us design the parade structure.

1. Volunteers:
We can still use more volunteers in the parade, so feel free to let others know they are welcome to participate.
We need volunteers for the following tasks:
a) Parade marshals – we can use 10 marshals to walk or ride along the parade, making sure it stays together, and communicating with other sections of the parade.  No experience necessary!  It’s fun!
b) Banner holders – we need 8 banner holders to carry Honk! Parade banners at the head of the procession.  No experience necessary!  It’s fun!
c) Puppet operators – we need 40 puppet holders to carry puppets with Bread and Puppet Theater and Mystic Paper Beasts.

 If you’d like to volunteer for any of these needed positions, please email us to let us know what specifically you would like to do.
2. Logistics:
– We will meet Sunday, October 2 at 11 a.m. in the parking lots at Herbert and Day Streets, behind the CVS in Davis Square.  See map for set-up location and parade route.  We have not yet determined the order of the parade, but will have information Sunday morning.
– The parade will start promptly at 12 noon.  Parade route: Day Street to Elm Street; Elm Street to Beech Street; Beech Street to Massachusetts Avenue; Massachusetts Avenue to JFK Street (at Harvard Square); JFK Street to Winthrop Park, where the Harvard Square Oktoberfest will take place.  (here’s a link to the google map – though it wouldn’t allow us to show that we will take JFK Street directly to Winthrop Park–JFK Street is a one-way street going the other way)
– You can strike and pack up your parade materials at Winthrop Park.  Honk bands will be playing all afternoon.
3. Important to Keep in Mind while Parading:
– The parade will include 29 brass bands and 31 community groups.  Parades are somewhat amorphous events, and we count on you to help us keep this one together.  Please stay about 20 feet behind the group in front of you.  Please try to keep your contingent or band from bunching up or being too spread out.  If parade elements are too scrunched together, the audience can’t see what they represent.  If the parade elements have too much space between them, the same thing happens.
– The parade theme is “Share”–we invite your group to respond to this theme.  See our earlier letter to participants for more information about the theme.
– At Harvard Square we will go by a reviewing stand, and John Bell will read a short (one or two-sentence) description of each group.  If you have not yet emailed us us a short descriptive sentence about your troupe, please feel free to do so!
– PLEASE DO NOT SLOW DOWN OR STOP AS YOU PASS THE REVIEWING STAND AT HARVARD SQUARE.  The parade wants to continue all the way to Winthrop Park, and groups that slow down or stop at the reviewing stand cause the parade to falter and disintegrate.  PLEASE CONTINUE PARADING ALL THE WAY TO WINTHROP PARK.  thanks….!

We appreciate your involvement in this community processional theater event–it’s an example of how we can create collective events that articulate ideas and stories that invigorate, investigate, and celebrate our lives in 2011!!
Click here for a full schedule for the three-day long event.
Please let us know if you have any questions about the parade and your group’s part in it. If you’re interested in volunteering for the parade or the festival at large, please email us as soon as possible – we’re less than a week away from the grand event!
See you all soon!
Sincerely yours in Honk!,
John Bell
Ellen Arnstein
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Community Groups Participating in the 2011 Honk! Parade (31 groups):
Amnesty International (2 groups)
Boston Area Guild of Puppeteers
Boston Derby Dames
Bread and Puppet Theater
Cambridge Center for Adult Education
Cambridge Kids’ Cooperative
City Life/Vida Urbana
Colombia Vive
Critical Mass (2 groups)
Endangered Species with Lipstick
Food Not Bombs
Future of Labor Organizing in Higher Education
Institute for Infinitely Small Things
Lindy Bomb Squad
Masonic Lodges (Amicable Lodge and Mount Olivet Lodge)
Mass Uniting
Maud Morgan Arts
Moving New England
Mystic Paper Beasts
Open Air Circus
Papercut Zine Library
Puppet Showplace
Radical Cheerleaders
Red Bandanna Brigage
Royal Frog Ballet
SCUL
Star Wheel
Veterans for Peace
Wheelright’s One-Man Marching Band

Bands Participating in the 2011 Honk! Parade (29 bands):
Blem Sou Blem
The Brass Balagan
Brass Messengers
The Bread & Puppet Circus Band
Caka!ak Thunder
The Carnival Band
Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble
Detroit Party Marching Band
Dirty Water Brass Band
DJA-Rara
EE – Environmental Encroachment
Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band
The Expandable Brass Band
Extraordinary Rendition Band
Factory Seconds
Forward! and The Milwaukee Molotov Marchers
Leftist Marching Band
Minor Mishap Marching Band
The Open Hand Orchestra
Hungry March Band
Rude Mechanical Orchestra
Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band
Seed & Feed Marching Abominable
The Springville All Star Marching Band
Titanium Sporkestra
Tufts Pep Band
What Cheer? Brigade
Young Fellaz

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Greetings community organizers, dancers, stilters, puppeteers, cyclists, hoopers, movers and shakers, roller-skaters, color guards, cheerleaders, business owners, union members, and neighbors

We invite you to participate in this year’s HONK! Parade, which will take place on Sunday, October 2nd, starting at 12PM from Davis Square and traveling, as in past years, to Harvard Square, arriving around 1:30PM!
(PLEASE NOTE: This year’s Honk! Festival will not take place Columbus Day weekend as in previous years, but the weekend before: September 30-October 3.)

This year we invite you to once more apply your collective energy, talents and inspirations to create low-cost and spectacular costumes, banners, parading objects, puppets, human-powered vehicles, and other devices yet un-conceived that will once more make the Honk! Parade a vibrant and inspiring articulation of our collective spirits, aspirations, and points of view about the world we live in in the year 2011.  As always, we look forward to your compelling inventions for an ambulatory performance space about 25’ wide, 50’ long, and 15’ tall, filled with color and energy to match the brass bands playing in front of and behind you.
If you’d like to participate or volunteer, or just have questions about the parade, please feel free to Contact Us!

NEWS WE WANT YOU TO KNOW:
1. Theme for 2011: SHARE
This year, we want to focus our activist street band festival on a theme: SHARE.

Our message to participating bands includes the following:
All street bands who come to HONK! place a priority on sharing their sound and spectacle for whoever wants to stop and listen. But sharing music in the streets isn’t the only kind of sharing we do, and not the only kind of generosity our bands support. Here in the U.S. right now, and around the world, everything that is properly a shared inheritance of all the world’s people is being carved up, fenced off, exploited and discarded by an ever tinier group of people, a trend that is immoral and unsustainable. We invite all of you to contemplate, as activist musicians, how we can how share our music in the streets to inspire and embolden change.

We propose that this year’s contingents in the Honk! Parade investigate the dynamics of SHARE by creating actions, images, slogans, concepts, choreographies and other elements that explore how we can share our lives, communities, resources, and spirits.  Please feel free to respond to this theme as you wish!

2. Band Partners
We would like to encourage your group to work together with one of the participating brass bands, to collaborate and coordinate your images, movements, and ideas directly or indirectly with one of the bands.  Please send us information about your group if you would like us to help you find a partner brass band.
So far, we know for certain that the following bands will be coming to this year’s Honk! Festival: AfroBrazil, Brass Balagan’, Bread and Puppet Circus Band, Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble, Dirty Water Brass Band, Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band, Environmental Encroachment, Expandable Brass Band, Extraordinary Rendition Band, Leftist Marching Band, Open Hand Orchestra, Raya Brass Band, Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society, Seed and Feed Marching Abominable, Titanium Sporkestra, To Be Named Later Brass Band, What Cheer? Brigade, and Young Fellaz.  Other possible band participants include Carnival Band, Detroit Party Marching Band, Minor Mishap Orchestra, the Springville All-Star Marching Band, Caka!ak Thunder, Hungry March Band, Milwaukee Molotov Marchers, Djarara, Brass Messengers, and Factory Seconds (phew!).
We propose you take a look at the band page to see what kinds of music the bands are playing; write us if you would like to connect with a band directly.

3. Parade Meetings
We will talk and brainstorm more about this year’s parade the the Honk Volunteer Meeting, on Monday, September 12 at 6:30 p.m. at the Somerville Public Library West Branch, 40 College Avenue in Davis Square. Please contact us to be added to our volunteer/participant mailing list to be alerted of further meetings.

4. Parade Participant Information
At the end of the parade, in Harvard Square, we announce each group at a reviewing stand.  If you could give us a few lines about your group that we could use on the reviewing stand, we would appreciate it! This way, we can SHARE with Honk! Fest spectators a better picture of the exciting and diverse makeup of this year’s parade. A short, few line bio will do.

5. Resources
This year, we’ve added a page to our Honk! website to encourage parade participants to be bigger and more spectacular than ever. Check out our RESOURCES page for some guidance and inspiration!
We look forward to hearing from you, and to seeing your wonderful work in action at the Honk! Parade.  In the meantime, please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, or epiphanies.

Yours for the Honk! Parade,

John Bell
Ellen Arnstein
Feel free to e-mail us!