30th Musketaquid Earth Day Celebration Goes Virtual

The Umbrella Prepares Expansive Month-long Series of Online & At-Home Activities Amid Covid-19

CONCORD, MA—April 25, 2020 would have marked several milestones for The Umbrella Arts & Environment Program.  Commemorating both the 30th anniversary of Concord’s Musketaquid Earth Day celebration and the 50th anniversary of International Earth Day itself, this year’s parade and festival were to have been the most ambitious yet as programming was scheduled to return to 40 Stow Street after years of construction and expansion.  

Region-wide partnerships were forged to create a month-long schedule of activities exploring of the theme “Fresh Water and Our Watershed,” from water treatment plant tours to a film festival, boating excursions to multimedia art installations.

But with the coronavirus state of emergency, Earth Day planners were forced to pivot, completely reconceptualize and repackage its programs for the new normal of social distancing.

The resulting celebration, Musketaquid Earth Day 2020 Re-Imagined, instead offers an extensive series of virtual learning and creative activities rolled out from April 1-May 20 exploring the Water theme. All can be performed DIY at-home, online, or asynchronously as outdoors activities while maintaining social distancing.

Key components include Earth Month 30/50 – 30 water-themed activities released over 50 days, from making a glass harmonica or a rain stick to canoeing the Sudbury River; building an Earth Float to watching themed performances.  The annual Earth Month Exhibition that would have been displayed in The Umbrella’s Main Gallery has been moved onto the online Art Cloud platform, where work can explored and even purchased for pickup after Covid-19 restrictions.  

Artist Liz Helfer’s installation The Voyage of the Yellow Wellies, was planned to range throughout The Umbrella building. But the sprawling multimedia print, audio and video installation exploring the SuAsCo watershed, proved highly adaptable to an online installation, according to Arts & Environment Director Nancy Lippe.

The homepage for Musketaquid Earth Day 2020 Re-Imagined can be found at TheUmbrellaArts.org/Earth-Day and updates are released almost daily on The Umbrella’s social media and email list.