FABRIC Arts Festival returning to Fall River in October

FALL RIVER — How does art change a city and bring together different communities around the celebration of shared space? How does a festival that proposes encounters, conversations and reimagining of the city’s public space occur with the limitations of a post-COVID world?

The 2020 edition of the FABRIC Arts Festival (October 16-17 in Fall River) will create a new experience of cultural impact and community participation via an innovative format that has been reimagined to practice physical distancing yet promote social solidarity. FABRIC 2020 seeks to inspire a narrative that celebrates and reflects the urban and social fabric of Fall River, its industrial heritage, and its deeply rooted cultural bond with Portugal.

The FABRIC Arts Festival is organized by Casa dos Açores da Nova Inglaterra with the curatorship of international art impresarios Jesse James, Sofia Carolina Botelho and António Pedro Lopes, all of whom developed the programming for the inaugural edition in 2019. The current limitations on international travel and on public gatherings has altered the festival’s planning and programming, but not hampered its ingenuity and creativity. The Curatorial Team will remain in Portugal but has been working diligently with the U.S. Production Team to present a dynamic hybrid edition of the festival this year. FABRIC 2020 will combine physical artistic interventions in downtown Fall River with unique virtual experiences that are engaging and culturally rewarding.

As with the pilot edition in 2019, FABRIC 2020 will bring international musical performances to Fall River; in a time of limited travel, these free concerts will be pre-recorded specifically for Fall River audiences and projected onto iconic city buildings. Performances will invite audiences to use their imagination to immerse themselves in new ways of appreciating the arts in a post-COVID landscape. Site-specific art installations will return this year as well, joined by the debut of “walking art encounters” and workshops that will invite participants to discover Fall River in new ways and feature notable areas, including Historic Downtown and the Quequechan River Rail Trail. FABRIC 2020 programming is free and open to the public, though some activities will require pre-registration due to limited capacity.

More information will be available in the coming weeks at www.fabricfallriver.com.

As an eclectic and multi-generational event, the FABRIC Arts Festival is, foremost, a welcoming invitation to rediscover Fall River, explore its cultural and historical dynamics, and celebrate its singularities.

The full program for FABRIC 2020 will be released soon. For more information, visit www.fabricfallriver.com.