The planet needs our help more than ever before — and Jamaica Plain is going to do our part this Saturday at the 47th Annual Wake Up the Earth Festival.

The WUTE Festival is sponsored and awesomely organized by Spontaneous Celebrations. It takes a lot of work to put this Festival on every year — so please say thank you to the organizers, and if possible, please support them in other ways, too.

Also, this isn’t your normal festival, this is a festival with important local significance! Learn about the history of the WUTE Festival — and how it celebrates that local organizers defeated a plan to run a highway through Jamaica Plain!

Two Parades!

If this is your first WUTE Festival — it begins with two parades — and everyone is invited to participate! There are lots of ways to parade — walk, wheelchair, use stilts — and there will be puppets, bucket drumming, elementary aged school groups, merpeople, trolls, bands, and more. True to the Festival’s theme, this is a green parade, so no cars are allowed — but you can bring strollers, wagons, push scooters, and bicycles are allowed if you walk them (no riding).

One parade steps off from Curtis Hall (20 South St.) at 11 am (meet at Curtis Hall at 10:30 am), and ends at the Festival by the Stonybrook T station. This is the longer of the two parades. The second parade begins at Lawson Park in Egleston Square (3 Atherton St.), which starts at 11:30 am (meet up at 11 am), and ends at the Festival. This parade is led by the Merfolk, and the Dirty Water Brass Band.

If you’re interested in parading, please click here to signup or email wuteparade@gmail.com.

The Festival

The Festival is around the Stonybrook T Station area (it would be very, very hard for you to miss it!) and there are numerous performance stages, vendors (plants, soaps, clothing, candles, art), there’s a nonprofit area, cardboard sliding down a hill section, a mural project, an awesome junk percussion spot for the kiddos.

Click here for a full performance schedule!