Calabasas festival gets kick off

MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn CELEBRATING THE ARTS-Calabasas Mayor James Bozajian and Thelma Star with the Calabasas Arts Council pose for photographs during a kick-off event for the third annual Calabasas Cultural Festival at Leonis Adobe Museum on Friday. The festival will be Sat., Oct. 4 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Leonis Adobe Museum on Calabasas Road.

On Fri., Sept. 12 a proclamation was presented by Calabasas city officials to the Calabasas Arts Council officially recognizing October as Arts and Humanities Month. The ceremony was on the site of the Leonis Adobe, where Jason Katzman of Paramount Rodeo Realty and Michele Halpin of the Calabasas branch of Wells Fargo Bank presented funds to the Calabasas Arts Council to help support the third annual Calabasas Cultural Festival at Old Town.

The Festival will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sat., Oct. 4 on the grounds of the Leonis Adobe Museum, 23537 Calabasas Road, Calabasas. Paramount Rodeo Realty and Wells Fargo Bank are major sponsors of the event.

The festival will feature arts and craft classes for children, live bands, performances of flamenco and line dancing as well as a classical guitarists’ showcase. Additional activities include pottery and art demonstrations, wildlife exhibitions, hands on demonstrations of butter churning, carding sheep’s wool and yarn spinning, rope spinning with lasso, livestock feeding and a lesson about branding in the 1800s and the role of the blacksmith.

According to the Calabasas Arts Council, the day’s activities will emphasize and celebrate the strong sense of community and multicultural history by integrating the arts and the cultural history of the Calabasas area and also raise awareness of the city’s historic past as the "Last of the Old West."

Festival admission is free. For more information, please call the Calabasas Arts Council at (818) 878-4242, ext. 270.