Polk County News
Polk County Itemizer-Observer • October 26, 2016 5A
Folk: Festival in its
second year
Continued from Page 1A
Want to do more than
just listen and watch? The
What: Polk County
festival’s “jam” area gives
Folklife Festival.
musical attendees a chance
Where: Polk County
to join in the fun, led by
Fairgrounds & event Cen-
jam master Truman Price.
ter.
“If you are a local artist
When: Saturday 10 a.m.
and you’ve got your guitar
to 8 p.m.
or your fiddle, you can
Admission: $10 per
bring that,” Johnson said.
person or $5 and five cans
“There will be an area spec-
of food to benefit
ified, so you can sit around
Willamette Valley Food
the room and play and
Assistance Program in Dal-
las. Children 12 and
jam.”
younger are free.
If all the listening to
Of note: Festival organ-
music (or playing), dancing
izers are looking for ideas
and wandering among ven-
for the festival. Have any-
dor booths has you hungry
thing you would like to
and thirsty, Folklife has
see in future years? Send
local cuisine and libations
suggestions to info@polk-
on hand.
countyfolklife.com.
Black Rock BBQ, Critelli
Sweets & Eats, and the fair-
grounds caterer will be serving local favorites. Rogue Ales
and Airlie Winery will be pouring in the wine and beer gar-
den.
Johnson said Folklife’s goal for this weekend is to show-
case art, especially traditional forms, in all its variety in
one place.
“As we all started to come together as a group, our vi-
sion is to bring a variety of music and performing arts and
food, to see the cultural differences that are here locally
that maybe you don’t get to see on a regular basis,” she
said. “That is what our main goal is, to bring all of that, so
people can see that there still is a tradition in handmade,
handcrafted (art).”
Check it out
eMILY MenTzeR/Itemizer-Observer
Emily Gluckin is working with the Polk County Rural Tourism Studio to help promote the area.
Gluckin RARE works tourism
By Emily Mentzer
The Itemizer-Observer
www.polkio.com
POLK COUNTY — Emily
Gluckin has already started
breathing new life and ener-
gy into the Polk County
Rural Tourism Studio, a proj-
ect that kicked off in January
2015.
Gluckin, 23, is a volunteer
with Resource Assistance for
Rural Environment, an
Americorps program. She is
working with the Rural
Tourism Studio focus groups
to help further plans and get
the gears moving on attract-
ing tourists to Polk County.
She studied environmen-
tal studies in college, with a
concentration on sustain-
ability and a minor in green
building and community
design. She was in Montana
doing another Americorps
program when she heard
someone talking about “this
Pencil
us
in!
www.polkio.com
cool-sounding program that
focused on planning and
was in Oregon,” Gluckin re-
called.
She was working at a bike-
ped advocacy organization,
which will come in handy
for the tourism efforts in
Polk County.
“It’s kind of like my posi-
tion last year was a small
piece of planning, and my
interests are really on a
broader scale,” Gluckin said.
Gluckin hadn’t thought
about the role tourism plays
in community planning.
“The more I looked into
(this) position and thought
a b o u t t h e p r o j e c t s, i t
seemed like a perfect fit,”
she said. “I don’t know why I
didn’t think about it before.
It’s community develop-
ment. I really like the
process of creating experi-
ences in a community.”
Tourism is creating public
spaces that make people
want to visit, or make people
who live in a community
proud of it, Gluckin said.
“A big factor of this job is
working with a lot of different
people and different towns
and different players in the
tourism field,” she said. “I’m
really excited to learn how
tourism affects a place, how
it affects the people who live
there, and how it affects peo-
ple who are visiting.”
With the work done by the
Rural Tourism Studio com-
mittees, Gluckin has a solid
starting point.
“They’ve gotten a lot done
since (2015),” Gluckin said.
“Our goal is to reboot that
effort and get people moti-
vated to be involved and get
some projects on the table.
One of my main roles will be
facilitator of that process —
coordinating meetings, cre-
ating action steps from
those meetings, hopefully
get some fun projects organ-
ized.”
Gluckin has the perfect
h o b b i e s t o c o o rd i n a t e
tourism efforts in Polk
County — she loves hiking
and mountain biking, and is
learning quickly about the
wine industry — not to
mention the potential
tourism draw of the 2017
total solar eclipse in August.
“We’re right in the path of
totality, and apparently Polk
County has the best average
weather forecast for that
time of year out of anywhere
in the country,” Gluckin
said. “I think it’s going to be
big. I think my main role in
that will be coordination —
getting businesses involved,
starting now, making sure
people know it’s happening,
and plan accordingly.”
Get involved: egluckin@
ci.independence.or.us.
OReGOn VALLeY BOYS/Itemizer-Observer
Oregon Valley Boys will headline Folklife.