Olde Concord community comes to life with Fall Festival
-
Olde Concord Fall Festival promotional poster - Poster submitted
-
Acoustic duo Laney & Bishop, also known as LAB, will be performing live at the Olde Concord Fall Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 25, at the historic Choto Masonic Lodge. - Poster submitted
The Olde Concord community, once again, will come to life with activities and music when Choto Masonic Lodge hosts the Olde Concord Fall Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 25, at the historic lodge, 11019 Second Drive, in Concord.
A family-friendly event, a portion of which benefits LIFT East Tennessee, the festival is free and open to the public. There will be live local music from Laney & Bishop (or LAB) and more than 25 vendors, which include juried crafters and food and beverage trucks. Additionally, Knox County Sheriff’s officers will be on hand to help with parking and traffic.
“We’re very excited,” Choco Masonic Lodge trustee/member Brad Redmond said.
Previously “we had never had any local philanthropy (charity) as a lodge in over 150 years that we knew of,” he said. “It’s more like a homecoming of friends, family and neighbors.”
With its beginnings before the Civil War started, “we know the history of the lodge, in the past, and Concord, especially right after to the Civil War, supported a lot of the early churches that rented it, and it was a contracted school to Knox County Schools,” he said. “That’s where all the children went to school in this area, from kindergarten on up to upper school, or high school, until the Farragut High School was built.”
In going back to its roots, “we searched out a local group that we believe all of our members and all of our friends believe in,” he said. “That would be autism in children.
“We have many members who have friends, family and
associates who have children and younger adults who have autism.
“Through conversations with Smoky Mountain Autism Success Hub in Sevier County, which is extremely active, we were forwarded to a brand new group in the Knoxville area called LIFT,” he said.
According to its website, LIFT is a non-profit organization dedicated to “fostering learning, inclusion and
friendship together for individuals with autism and other neurodevelopmental differences.”
It serves these individuals as well as their families and caregivers.
Redmond said the lodge also benefits LIFT by contracting with the non-profit agency cut the lodge’s grass.
“We envisioned doing something not so much as a fundraiser as more of an introduction and for us to have something fun to do once a year at the lodge that was
more in the way I was brought up: a classic fall festival,” he said.
In the past, the local churches had done such festivals.
“It was really an introduction to LIFT and the lodge having something with a small-town kind of feel,” he added.
Redmond pointed out they looked for crafters who were true artisans, and the wares would be handmade, not flea market items or sales items for companies.
“It’s truly people who take the time to paint or quilt or woodwork or manufacture,” he said. “And, they fit along with the small town feel that we have in that little historic area of Concord.”
