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Johns Creek International Festival draws thousands By SYDNEY DANGREMOND sydney@appenmedia.com JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — Thousands gathered Saturday Oct. 23 for the third Johns Creek International Festival. The all-day event, held across the street from the Atlanta Athletic Club, included nearly 70 vendors featuring food, products, activities and entertainment from all over the globe. Regularly lauded as one of the most culturally diverse cities in the state, Johns Creek hosted individuals from all different backgrounds at the Saturday event. Edie Damann, the city’s external communications manager, took point on organizing the festival. “It’s important that people can come together and experience different types of foods and cultures and music and dance and all of the amazing things that make us different and unique, but can be enjoyed by everybody,” Damann said. “We want people to have a place or an event where they can come and learn about different cultures or try new foods, seek different types of performances… that perhaps they may have never had the opportunity to see before.” More than 50 volunteers worked alongside Damann and Johns Creek staff to help stage the city’s largest annual event. The city allocated $40,000 to the event, but much of the costs were supplemented through vendor fees and 13 different sponsorships, Damann said. As in past years, the city partnered with the Johns Creek Arts Center to run the Kids Zone. Arts Center Program Director Althea Foster worked for months to develop crafts and mini art projects
Spooky Mill returns to Autrey Mill Nature Preserve By SYDNEY DANGREMOND sydney@appenmedia.com
SYDNEY DANGREMOND/APPEN MEDIA
Visitors wander through a maze of nearly 70 vendor booths offering food, wares and entertainment at the Johns Creek International Festival held Oct. 23 across from the Atlanta Athletic Club. to engage the kids. Her research and deliberate planning resulted in eight different types of crafts for kids ranging from toddlers to middle schoolers. Each of the crafts represented a different country and came with cultural context and significance. Arts Center Executive Director Stephanie Donaldson said the organization created more the 1,200 crafts for the kids to complete at the festival. Its 40x40-foot tent was packed with artlovers all day. Arts Center instructors and student volunteers from local high schools helped in the effort. Other community organizations had booths on Saturday, including the Rotary Club of Johns Creek, Autrey Mill Nature Preserve and the Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra. City Council candidates were also
on hand. Some manned booths to interact with and provide platform information to prospective voters ahead of the Nov. 2 election. Throughout the day, attendees saw performances that spanned three continents from groups including the Magic Eastern Ensemble, Pure Hearts of Georgia and DanceFlix Academy. Shafiq Jadavji, president of the Johns Creek Cricket Association served as emcee. The Johns Creek Convention and Visitors Bureau promoted the event on their website and accompanying social media in the week leading up to the event. The organization also placed ads in Atlanta Magazine to promote the city at large. In a letter printed in the event’s program, Mayor Mike Bodker said the city intends to continue to grow the event each year.
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JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — The community-favorite Spooky Mill will resume haunting the Autrey Mill Nature Preserve this year. The family-friendly event will be divided into two parts on Oct. 30. From 1-4 p.m. the preserve will host Junior Spooky, focused on younger children. From 6-9 p.m. it will host Ooky Spooky which will have more haunts, better for older children and adults. While the event is hosted around Halloween, Board of Directors President Lara Maltby said Spooky Mill really serves as a fall festival for the community, highlighting autumnal traditions from various cultures. “We’re trying to make it be not just about Halloween, but about celebrating fall, because in many different cultures it’s a time of celebration and it’s a time of community building,” Maltby said. “Fall festivals are all about bringing the community together, celebrating the bounty of the harvest, celebrating the triumph of light over impending darkness, so we’re trying
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