The B.R.E.A.D! Festival, which was formerly held in Historic Dublin, bolsters connectedness among people of all backgrounds, cultures and even ages.
If you are wondering whether you can eat bread at the B.R.E.A.D! Festival on Oct. 14 at Coffman Park, you aren’t alone. I have been asked that several times.
There will be forms of bread and baked goods from multiple countries, but the acronym actually stands for Bake, Reconnect, Educate, make Art, celebrate Diversity. So you can expect to “break bread” with others in the community while you experience the international cuisine, a fair trade marketplace, and traditional music, art, and dance from multiple countries.
This is the third year for the B.R.E.A.D! Festival, and it’s an incredible opportunity to celebrate the many cultures in our community. The demographics at Dublin City Schools are rapidly changing with over 1,400 English as a Second Language students speaking more than 60 different languages. Through food and interactive experiences, we can enjoy learning something new about our neighbors and the nations they hail from.
Devayani Puranik has been involved in the B.R.E.A.D! Festival since the planning stages, and loved the idea of having cultural booths in addition to the vendor booths to represent and educate the public.
“Since Dublin is home to a large Indian population, my friends and I decided to host Glimpses of India with hands-on activities,” says Puranik.
The booth includes Henna designers who paint decorations on palms, calligraphy cards in Hindi script with visitors’ names, dance and percussion instrument demonstrations, and bread rolling and tasting.
“We display fun artifacts, currency and information about India, plus sari draping with bindi and jewelry,” says Puranik.
The sari is the five- to nine-yard-long garment that Indian women wear, while the bindi is the red dot placed on the forehead in the Hindu religion. Puranik recalls a fun experience last year when they draped a five-year-old girl in a shimmery sari, gave her bindi and jewelry to try on and painted a henna design on her hands.
“It was such an overwhelming experience for her that she started to cry out of excitement and said, ‘I feel royal like a queen and I’m going to rule the world!’”
Omar D’Angelo is the CEO of Barroluco Argentine Comfort Food, which includes catering services and a mobile restaurant. D’Angelo has brought his food truck to the B.R.E.A.D! Festival for the last two years and is looking forward to doing so again.
L. Danyel Falcon
“My parents and sister work with me so it’s a real family business and we love the family-friendly environment of this festival,” says D’Angelo.
Authentic Argentinian specialties will be offered such as empanadas, which are meat- or vegetable-stuffed pies with hard boiled eggs, onions, olives and spices blended together.
“Every empanada is made by hand and individually stamped with our personalized Barroluco press,” says D’Angelo.
You can also try a Latin American version of paella that has saffron, onions, peppers, meat or vegetable, but no seafood. Accompanying sauces include the chimichurri, which is like a pesto with parsley, roasted red pepper, garlic and olive oil, and the salsa golf sauce, which is creamy with mayonnaise, ketchup and spices. Kids and adults will love the churros, a fried donut treat, rolled in sugar with chocolate or dulce de leche. Barroluco is also bringing back the caramelized bourbon bacon churros for a second year.
“We love when visitors eat their churros so fast that they come back to buy more,” says D’Angelo, laughing. “More than anything, we love making Argentinian food and making other people happy.”
Hilary Frambes is a local artist who was hired by the Dublin Arts Council two years ago to create a large-scale multicultural chalk mural highlighting the variety of cultures represented in central Ohio. Last year she designed an interactive mural that the public helped color in with chalk.
“It was amazing to see people of all ages get down on the pavement to draw and create art together,” says Frambes.
This year, Frambes will switch gears a bit with a new experience that she calls “the opportunity of a lifetime.” A group of monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India will be visiting Dublin to create a beautiful and meaningful five-by-five-foot sand mandala over the course of several days. Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning sacred cosmogram, and this particular mandala is called Avalokiteśvara, or Buddha of compassion, which is significant as the festival aims to bring cultures together.
As part of the B.R.E.A.D! Festival, the monks will train Frambes to use their sand tools so she, in turn, can lead the public in creating its own separate public sand art piece.
“It will be incredible to learn from the originators of this ancient art and share the knowledge with festival attendees,” says Frambes.
The design will incorporate an image of the new pedestrian bridge that will connect Historic Dublin to Bridge Park.
“I want it to be multi-faceted with an image of the bridge representing the connecting of old and new Dublin as well as bridging our worlds and cultures as a community,” says Frambes.
You can meditate with the monks and watch them create the colorful mandala from noon to 6 p.m. Oct. 10 after the opening ceremony, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Oct. 11-13 and noon to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 14. When the mandala is complete, the sand will be swept away, signifying change and the impermanence of life. Visitors can take a bag of sand home as a blessing and approximately one cup of sand is reserved for the final ceremony.
The monks will lead a procession from the pavilion to the Post Road bridge over the stream. The audience will gather on the grass below the bridge and the monks will perform an Environmental Protection Agency-approved closing ceremony, culminating in the distribution of the cup of sand into the stream to distribute the compassion and healing energies into the world.
Colleen D’Angelo is a freelance writer who lives in Dublin with her husband, three children and several small animals. She enjoys playing tennis, walking the Dublin bike paths and traveling.
