A mini Woodstock Music Festival, known as Clarkstock, will occur on campus again this year, featuring well-known local talent.
The fourth annual festival will be held this weekend and is open for everyone in the community to attend. Guests will enjoy food, carnival games and live performances by local bands. The bands include Planet Here, Very Strangely, Zack Peacock and the Feathers and Barefoot and Blue.
Neil Lovett, Murray State graduate student, started the event in 2009 with the help of Lee Clark residential advisor staff and residential college council. It was created to mock the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York.
For the past three years, 150-200 people have attended the event.
“Everyone is welcome; we always have people from all the residential colleges, as well as people from Murray, international students, commuters, residents, everybody,” Siebold said. “We have commemorative t-shirts, we have a cookout, there will be hot dogs, cookies, brownies, chips; people are encouraged to bring their own chair, but lots of people just sit on the grass.”
There will also be several festival games with opportunities to win prizes. In the past, the event has mostly been a music festival with a few games, but this year they are adding carnival style games, Siebold said.
The residential advising staff has been working on this for months and they have met every Sunday night since August with the residential director for about an hour.
They divided up the work to focus on preparing for different areas of the festival including games, food, publicity and music. The Clark residential advisers contacted the local bands to play for the event as well.
The event raises money for Main Street Youth, an after school organization in Calloway County to help youth in the community. Clark College students chose to give to this organization because many have volunteered there and know what difference the program has made in the area. Clark College has been working with Main Street Youth for at least the last four years, Siebold said.
“Main Street Youth is a center for underprivileged youths in Calloway County to have constructive leadership,” Siebold said. “We’re going to be working with Main Street Youth Center as an organization and we’ve already visited with them once to see what ways we can volunteer and help out that will be meaningful to them.”
Peter Hausladen, Clark College residential director, hopes the parents and children from Main Street Youth will attend the festival. The event is something that Clark wants to put on for the community and people can buy t-shirts to raise money for the organization.
“I think the biggest one we’re looking for is just for people to come out and have fun,” Hausladen said. “Obviously we’d like to raise awareness for Main Street Youth and let people know that it’s out there if they want to volunteer their time and their money, but we also want people to come out and have good time.”
Clarkstock Music Festival will be from 1-5 p.m. Saturday Nov. 10 at the Intramural Fields near Clark College.
Story by Dominique Duarte, Staff writer.