Upper Peninsula Folklife Festival to come to Marquette
A woman practices the traditional art of weaving. (Photo courtesy of the Upper Peninsula Folk Festival)
Kivajat Dreaming of Finland, a youth Finnish folk dance group from Houghton, will be performing at the festival and hosting a dance workshop from 10-11:30 on Saturday in Northern Center Ballroom IV. (Photo courtesy of the Upper Peninsula Folk Festival)
A woman practices the traditional art of weaving. (Photo courtesy of the Upper Peninsula Folk Festival)
Kivajat Dreaming of Finland, a youth Finnish folk dance group from Houghton, will be performing at the festival and hosting a dance workshop from 10-11:30 on Saturday in Northern Center Ballroom IV. (Photo courtesy of the Upper Peninsula Folk Festival)
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MARQUETTE -- The year 2026 marks the first year of the Upper Peninsula Folklife Festival, a weekend-long event celebrating traditional arts running from Oct. 2-4 in various locations around Marquette County.
"Traditional folk arts are art forms or crafts that are learned in an informal environment, from artist to artist, rather than in an educational institution," says the Upper Peninsula Folklife Festival. "Some examples would be part of a quilting bee, a folk song circle, or a father teaching a son to carve duck decoys. It is a creative tradition that is passed from one person, or a folk group, to another member of that folk group."
The event is inspired by a series of Upper Peninsula Folklife Festivals coordinated by the Beaumier Heritage Center from 2009-2011.
The festival kicks off on Friday with an Upper Peninsula Food Crawl to restaurants like Trenary Toast, Digs Gastropub, The Delft Bistro and Lagniappe. Participating restaurants will serve special menu items featuring local cuisine such as cudighi and scandinavian fare.
Saturday is the main day of the festival, with all events taking place at the Northern Center on NMU's campus. Traditional craft and art demonstrations are free and open to the public from 9-11 a.m., and include such traditional arts as harp making, weaving, Native American beadwork and woodblock printing.
Traditional craft and music workshops are ticketed to cover the cost of materials, and run throughout the day at the Northern Center. Workshops include lacemaking, wooden spoon carving and the 5-string Finnish Kantele (Finnish lap harp). Tickets for these events are available at tickets.nmu.edu.
Saturday will also feature free performances and workshops of traditional music and dance throughout the day at the Northern Center from the Hiawatha House Band and the Cloverland Band, among others.
On Sunday, festival participants are encouraged to travel around Marquette County to experience more local arts and culture. Featured events include the Autumn Comforts Quilt Show, running Saturday and Sunday at the Ojibwa Casino, and a Barnes-Hecker Disaster memorial presentation by Annie Tippett being held at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the W. C. Peterson Auditorium in Ishpeming.
The Upper Peninsula Folklife Festival's website says that part of the impetus for the festival is that "The Upper Peninsula is going through a period of rapid change. Some communities are struggling to keep a populace while others are growing, even bringing in a growing number of people from outside the region.
"Where there are plusses and minuses to any kind of change, one thing that certainly seems to be threatened are the traditional arts of the region. In a region once full of rag-rug weavers, accordion players, and folk dancers, we see that these traditions are starting to fade away since there is not another generation there to pass them on."
The UP Folklife Festival hopes to change that by creating opportunities for people of all ages to learn about and experience regional traditional arts.
Sponsors of the event include the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, the American-Scandanavian Foundation, Northern Michigan University, the Hiawatha Music Co-op, the Upper Peninsula Arts and Culture Alliance, City of Marquette Arts and Culture, Superiorland Woodturners, Travel Marquette and others.
More information about the festival can be found at upfolklife.org.
Annie Lippert can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 550. Her email address is alippert@miningjournal.net.