I am happy to announce that the 2021 Mardi Gras parade planning team has met this past weekend and is starting to pull together the plans for the 70th Mardi Gras parade, which will be themed “Decades of Celebration” and will occur on Saturday November 20.
As the parade is celebrating its 70 year, the theme centers around all the decades that we have been coming together to celebrate the holiday season. The committee is hoping that organizations and community members will honor all the various decades of celebrations by creating unique floats, music, and themes that will honor the decade selected by each group entering the parade. Additionally, prizes will be awarded to the best entrants for the following categories:
Awards will be announced in the coming months for each category.
This year represents the handing of the baton to Discover Lansdale, who has stepped in as the lead organizer of the parade. Historically, a small team of committed community members have been marshalling the parade into existence every year. After the 2019 parade, those organizers reached out to me and discussed their tenure ending and wanted to ensure that the parade continued to occur. After some conversation and discussion, a small team was formed in March 2020 to discuss the path forward. COVID-19 then brought the whole transition to a halt.
However, as the pandemic has begun to subside, Discover Lansdale jumped back into the driver’s seat and was ready to begin the planning process anew for 2021.
The hope for this new era of the parade is to breathe new life into it without fundamentally changing what has always made the parade a success. Santa will still be riding down Main Street to greet the holiday season, bands and firetrucks will still be on display for all to see, and plenty of marchers and community member will be handing out candy and smiling as they make their way down the parade route. Additionally, buttons celebrating the theme of the parade will continue to be sold for those who enjoy collecting them.
However, starting this year, there will be a more concentrated effort on community engagement, particularly around the creation of floats. We want to see people’s imaginations come to life in the parade. We want to see how they interpret the theme and make it real for all of us to see. So, we are asking everyone who has ever been interested in participating to consider bringing some friends together and building a float that explores a decade that you really love and how the holiday season was celebrated in that era.
Registration forms for the parade will be available online at www.discoverlansdale.org soon. Until then, please reach out to Bill Henning at [email protected] to receive a registration form for the coming parade. Please indicate in your email if this is for commercial (business) or non-commercial registration as they have slightly different rules. All registration forms must be completed by November 1 to be in the parade.
I am excited to see the parade come together this year and I know it will be a huge success! To all those dedicated volunteers and community members who kept the parade alive year after year, you have the thanks of the whole community. Your dedication, passion, and commitment helped build Lansdale into the community we are today, and your presence will always be felt as it passes down Main Street.
To those who have stepped forward to help marshal the parade into a new era, thank you. Picking up the torch of an event with this type of legacy is not easy. However, I know we will be successful because Lansdale has so many passionate community members willing to lead and continue to make our home a great place to live, work, and play.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert.)
See also:
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