I volunteered at the folk festival this weekend with Jack, Quinn, and Eugene. Quinn and Jack collected donations while Eugene and I picked up stray trash and made sure people put their waste in appropriate bins, which included compost, trash, or recycling. There were sets of these bins stationed almost every thirty feet from each other, yet there was still trash everywhere – napkins flying around, hundreds of cigarette butts, food all over the ground. It made me think about how our kayak guides at Dutch Gap talked about getting rid of the trash cans in their area. They found that people littered way less when trash cans were absent. Could the same phenomenon occur at the festival? If there were fewer trash cans, would people be more encouraged to wait and find a trash can instead of just dropping their waste? I think it’d be an interesting experiment to try.
I also connected the festival to the flowchart in the class notes about creating a sense of community: awareness leads to appraisal leads to action. Many people donated money to keep the festival free for future years. People appreciate the free festival,56io0 ` which leads to them making a donation. Although this doesn’t concern a watershed, the two issues – taking care of watersheds and the festival – are similar in that when people understand its importance, they are more likely to do their part to maintain its quality. However, a middle aged woman came up to us and yelled that we needed to force the younger population to donate because she had “seen a lot of people under the age of forty without stickers!!” When you donate, you get a sticker. This, I felt, also supports the flow chart because the younger people at the festival probably only go to college in Richmond and don’t live here, so they do not attend this festival often or appreciate its significance. The fact that the young people are from different places means that they come from spaces with different characteristics – perhaps where there are not festivals or people are not generous enough to donate at similar events. Whatever the case, they understand different customs than those of Richmond and its folk festival. These people are not aware, so they do not act the same as those who are.
Aside from generally having a good time and doing service, I enjoyed the folk festival because I observed things that I was able to translate to things that we learned in class.