Culture
Fall River retains a vibrant mix of cultures from around the globe. While the distinct ethnic neighborhoods formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries have changed over the years, the legacy of immigrants who came to work in the mills can be found in the various parishes and restaurants throughout the city.
The city is host to many ethnic festivals throughout the year. The largest, the Great Holy Ghost Festival, occurs each August at Kennedy Park and attracts over 200,000 visitors, everywhere from Canada, to Portugal. The feast is held over a total of four days.
Each summer, the city uses its waterfront at Heritage State Park and Battleship Cove for a Fourth of July fireworks display. For many years the waterfront also hosted the annual Fall River Celebrates America Festival, sponsored by the Fall River Chamber of Commerce. The event was suspended in 2010, due to lack of financial support. However, the Chamber hopes to have the event again in 2011, to mark its 100th anniversary.
In recent years, different groups have made an effort to increase awareness in the arts in the city, using vacant mill space for studios and performance centers, such as the Narrows Center for the Arts on Anawan Street. A proposal is in place to revitalize the downtown area by the creation of an Arts District. Along with the art centers being established throughout the city, Fall River is also known throughout New England as a "City of Bands". Fall River has numerous Portuguese/Community Bands throughout the city that perform throughout the year.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“I’ve finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)