GREENSBORO, N.C. — Crews in downtown Greensboro are preparing to welcome more than 150,000 visitors this weekend as the North Carolina Folk Festival returns.
What You Need To Know
The North Carolina Folk Festival will run Friday through Sunday
The festival is expected to bring at least 150,000 visitors to downtown Greensboro
The festival was known as the National Folk Festival until 2019
The festival begins Friday and runs through Sunday. Visitors can find a variety of food, music and culture from around the world. Crews were out Thursday morning preparing the grounds ahead of the festival.
“It’s a true celebration of the multicultural diversity of our city. It’s really a festival of everything for everyone,” said Josh Sherrick, business service manager at Creative Greensboro.
Sherrick has been assisting with the festival since its start as the National Folk Festival back in 2015. Seven years later, he’s still hands-on with preparations, assisting with operations and logistics of security and public safety.
“We have these four different sites. At any given time we can have 50, 60, 70,000 people on the site at any given time,” he said.
The week leading up to the festival is possibly the busiest of the year for Sherrick. He says festival organizers and city partners start planning the following year’s festival almost immediately after the end of the current one. Those plans start to come together nearly six months prior to festival weekend.
With performers staged in four different areas of the festival, there are many entrances to the grounds. According to Sherrick, crews placed multiple 10,000-pound Jersey barriers to stop any vehicles from driving through the festival. Road crews are restricting traffic and closing down some surrounding streets as well. Sherrick says public safety personnel from city, county and state agencies will be monitoring the festival.
“We have a good plan in place. We know the different risks. We know the most common risks are, and then basically we just tried to be as prepared as possible,” he said.
Anyone can visit the festival free of charge and enjoy various musical acts from across the nation, including North Carolina-born funk legend George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic. For more information on the North Carolina Folk Festival, click here.