Mount Pleasant Magazine Fall 2011

he Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival

provides an excellent opportunity

to take advantage of great food and

entertainment and a vast array of the

Charleston area’s signature souvenir, all

the while enjoying coastal Carolina’s

near-perfect late-spring weather. But

the event, held each year in Mount Pleasant, South

Carolina, also can be a learning experience, a chance to

delve deeply into the history of a

people and an art they have practiced for more than three

centuries on two continents.

“The festival serves as a venue to educate locals

as well as tourists about the heritage of the Gullah-

Geechee people, their culture and traditions,”

according to Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival Project

Director Thomasena Stokes-Marshall. “We also have

entertainment, gospel songs, folklore, arts and crafts,

and, of course, the largest display of sweetgrass baskets

anywhere in the Lowcountry.”

A growing Charleston area tradition beginning

in 2005, the festival is now held each June at Mount

Pleasant’s Memorial Waterfront Park, in the shadow of

the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Named a Top 20 Event

for 2010 and 2011 by the Southeast Tourism Society, the

festival offers Gullah cuisine cooked up by Lowcountry

restaurants and food vendors, family fun and games,

music, performances by the Adande African Drummers

and Dancers, basket-making demonstrations and, of

course, the opportunity to admire and purchase a wide

range of sweetgrass baskets and other products created by

local artists and crafters.

Sweetgrass

Cultural Arts Festival

By Brian Sherman

This event features an assortment of unique handmade arts and crafts, paintings, live performances and

documentary films.enjoy a day filled with entertainment that includes gospel songs and praise dance,

storytelling and Gullah-Geechee skits, and live basket-making demonstrations.