Healthy Homewood Fest, an outdoor festival planned for Saturday, July 16, in Homewood, will bring together wellness providers for physical and mental well being.
Healthy Homewood Fest will take place from noon to 8 p.m. on Martin Avenue in downtown Homewood with a main stage and smaller tents for exhibitors.
The fest is set to have live drum music, dancing, meditation, yoga, oracle card readings, healthy food, body weight workouts, a gong wash and numerous vendors with a focus on health and wellness.
Healthy Homewood Fest is organized by Liz Smith of Serendipity Yoga and the Village of Homewood. Smith said many festivals are more focused on what you can physically buy and not services, but that’s not Healthy Homewood Fest.
“We were trying to focus more on the services that are present in our village – not only what you can buy but what you can experience,” Smith said.
“Homewood has an amazing array of wellness providers. We have a lot of chiropractors. We have fabulous massage therapists. We have wonderful therapists in town. Gyms. Yoga,” Smith said. “The thought was: Why not bring everybody, or at least a good sampling of everybody, together into one space?”
In October 2021, there was a similar event, the Homewood Wellness Festival, but it was smaller and indoors. Smith said there were about 17 exhibitors and a couple hundred attendees. This year, Healthy Homewood Fest is set to have 20-25 tents and the main stage.
The registration window for exhibitors had closed by mid-June, but Smith said she is still hearing from people, so the fest may continue to grow “because we’re outside, we’re not capped at a specific number of people.”
At Healthy Homewood Fest, Smith said “wellness” isn’t only defined as therapy, exercise and medicine. Vendors such as Bookie’s, the local bookstore, will be there. Smith said the philosophy is essentially that music, books and what brings happiness can be a part of wellness, too.
“Taking care of ourselves starts in our own body. But then bringing community together to take care of each other is then the ultimate culmination,” Smith said. “If we can better take care of ourselves, we can better take care of each other.”
Smith hopes Healthy Homewood Fest is “the first of many festivals of this type for years to come” in Homewood.