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This year's festival was held for the second time at the historic Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson site in Winnabow, off Highway 133. Located on the banks of the Brunswick River and surrounded by some of the County's largest former rice fields, this venue once again offered an excellent site for the free public Festival. With plenty of free parking, scenic Brunswick River views and a boardwalk, multiple stage locations, lots of space for vendors, picnic tables, guided tours, and a museum, the 2024 Festival seemed primed for a perfect day.
Mother Nature, however, had other plans...
Overnight and early-morning soaking rains made setting up the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources-sponsored “Come Hear NC Stage” impossible. Three of the five bands scheduled to perform had to cancel. Vendors struggled to situate their tables and tents. Still, toward noon, the crowds began to swell, and the “show,” as they say, had to go on. Two live groups—Juke Joint Hymnal, a dynamic “jazz, uplifting tent revival, and front-porch blues duo” of Robo Jones and Micheal Covington; and a local award-winning favorite group, The Ian Daviz Band—braved the weather nonetheless, moving their performances to the Festival’s Brunswick and North Carolina Arts Councils’ Children’s Stage and under the patio next to the site’s museum.
When the sun came out in full force later in the day, Festival activities proceeded with a full afternoon of speakers, panels, storytelling, and demonstrations. Damp grounds notwithstanding, most of the scheduled speakers and panelists presented pretty much according to plan under the big tent at the Gullah Geechee Corridor Stage. That stage, sponsored by the federally chartered Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor organization, another big sponsor of the NC Rice Festival, invited attendees to hear panelists including historian Kimberly Sherman, PhD (“Eagles Island: A Shifting Cultural Landscape”); professional Black History storyteller and historical reenactor Carolyn Evans dramatization of “The Day the Children Disappeared;" Dr. Aurelio Givens speaking about the new International African American Museum.
Rounding out the presentations under the Corridor’s Stage tent were Tyanna Parker-West’s discussion about the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission’s Africa-to-Carolina project; and a panel examining the work of African American abolitionist Thomas Peters featuring Fambul Tik (Family Tree) Founder/CEO Amadu Massally, historian and award-winning author John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Brunswick Town/Ft. Anderson Site manager Jim McKee.
The Children’s Stage was another Festival focal point, not only because it provided shelter from the morning rain but because it was where the Festival’s invited storytellers offered intriguing presentations. There young and old were held sway by Gullah Geechee storytellers Carolyn Evans and Marva Moss. Other children’s “edu-tainment” was provided by storyteller Joan Leotta, and the ensemble troupe, Turning the Wheel Wilmington, part of a national nonprofit arts and education organization “dedicated to making body based creative expression and play accessible to individuals of all ages, experiences, genders, and cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.”
The Children’s Stage also served as a site for multiple kids' activities and games and for distribution of free copies of The North Carolina Gullah Geechee Activity Book. That book, produced by the NCRFI for children from 3rd grade on up, presents a wide range of fun facts, music, recipes, and learning activities about the history of rice cultivation and the Gullah Geechee people in the coastal Carolina area, particularly in Brunswick County and Brunswick Town.
The booklets were created with funding from The Landfall Foundation, the collaborating arts councils, and the NCRFI and widely distributed to Festival attendees, several of whom came from as far away as Raleigh, Charlotte, and Atlanta. Judging from recipients’ responses, it too was well-received, and many attendees took multiple copies back to share with their kids, grandkids, classroom and Sunday School students, and other learners, young and old.
Also present during Festival day were a number of historical interpreters who hosted live demonstrations showing how the early settlers and enslaved persons engaged in tasks such as soapmaking, cheesemaking,
and tar-processing during the 17th century in the settlements of Fort Brunswick and surrounds. Vendors of all sorts were also on site at the Festival showcasing and selling their arts and crafts, along with food trucks featuring various items and sundries.
All in all, the 2024 North Carolina Rice Festival went off without too many hitches, and a good time was had by all of the estimated 4,000 folks who showed up and enjoyed the four days of “Education Through Celebration.”