Join the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music and the Champaign County Museums Network for its 11th year of One Community Together (OCT) programming for the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival on August 24, 2019.  This year’s programming and children’s activities kick off with another special performance by the Bow-Dacious String Band and the BBL Jazz Band and Drumline, and will again conclude with an outstanding finale performance by the Urbana, Central, and Centennial High School marching bands playing Tom Wallace’s arrangement of Margaret Cobb and Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby” under the direction of the University of Illinois’ Director of the Marching Illini, Barry Houser.  The One Community Together stage is located this year at the corner of Broadway and Water Streets, and all performances and children’s activities are free and open to the public.

OCT performance schedule:

11:30-12:30 Bow-Dacious String Band and BBL Jazz Band
12:45-1:30 Two Boys Going Nowhere singing from the American songbook
1:45-2:30 Bali Lantari Balinese drumming and dance
2:45-3:30 Jean Rene Balekita and BOMOYI Congolese rumba melodies
3:45-4:30 Tradition Jazz Orchestra
5:00-6:15 Urbana, Central, and Centennial Marching Bands

OCT children’s activities:

11:30-1:00 Pollinator Puppets: Bees, Butterflies and Flowers Puppet Theater (Pollinatarium)
11:30-1:30 Toys of the 19th Century (Museum of the Grand Prairie)
11:30-4:30 Music Instrument Exploratorium Adventure (Sousa Archives)
12:30-2:30 Modelling New York City’s Holland Tunnel Disaster under the Hudson River with Construction Paper and Fans (Distributed Museum)
1:00-3:00 Crafty Coronation: Make Your Own Crown (Spurlock Museum)
2:00-4:00 Music Making with Didgeridoos, Australia’s Oldest Wooden Brass Instrument (Sousa Archives)
2:30-4:30 Mystery Mammals of Illinois and Other Nature Games (Homer Lake Interpretative Center)
2:30-4:30 Mibsters, Ringers, and Duck: Crafting America’s Marble Game (Champaign County History Museum)
3:00-5:00 Nature Play (Anita Purves Nature Center)
3:00-5:00 Solar Adventures: Exploring Telescopes, Meteorites, and the Sun (Staerkel Planetarium)

For further information about this weekend’s OCT programming please call the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at 217-333-4577.  For a complete schedule of the Festival’s performances and other family programming please visit https://urbanasweetcornfestival.com/.