Creating a special event that
and educates is not always easy. When the event is successful, it is worth the reward
and the extra effort. Events can help increase awareness and attendance. They can
also serve as extensions of the educational
and daily programming. When we come across a successful event, we have to share
it with our readers. For other blogs on successful events, check out the story
from or .

Thanks to Jonathan Creel, Director of Interpretation at the , to help describe the Los Alamos Bear Festival.

Describe your event – what is it about and who attends.

We planned the first Los Alamos Bear Festival
after a summer that included a black bear attack on a trail that made national
news, numerous bear sightings in town, and even a bear that hitched a ride in a
garbage truck. It was evident that Los Alamos residents needed more education
on how to co-exist with these amazing creatures. We spoke to local partners,
including the Land of Enchantment Wildlife Foundation (the group that rehabilitates
bears around the state), and ended up with the idea of dedicating a month of
programming to living in bear country that culminated in the first Bear
Festival.

Our
main goal is raising awareness of the simple steps residents can take to make
their homes less attractive to bears and how to be more “bear aware” while
hiking and residing in bear country.

Our first event was more popular than we imagined and had about 400 attendees. Most of the people who came were locals that wanted to learn more because bears were at the center of various news stories in town for over a year. Because of the popularity of the event, we hosted another the next year, and had our third this year. In 2019, 800 people came out for Bear Festival! We’ve steadily grown each year and have added programming and partners to the festival.

Why do you think this particular event has been so successful in drawing visitors to your site?

Bears are charismatic mega-fauna! What more
can you ask for?

This is a themed day of programming entirely
focused on sharing a home with bears. We have a variety of educational
activities for children and adults woven into the festival. So, while we do
have bear face-painting and a balloon artist who twists balloon bears, we also
have bear resistant containers people can test, a bear bag hanging
demonstration, booths discussing what you can do around your house to make it
less attractive to bears, organizations presenting local bear research, a group
that collects bear scat and shows people how their diets change throughout the
year, and presentations about bear biology and how to react when you encounter
a bear.

Because we have lectures, articles, an “Eat Like a Bear Buffet” the evening before, and a social media push all about bears leading up to the event, we reach a more diverse audience. We’ve managed to get our message out and partner with numerous entities to pull the festival off!

Learning how to hang a bear bag was just one of the many bear-themed interactives at this event.

Is there anything special you have to do to prepare for this event? Is there anything that you simply cannot fully prepare for?

Oh yes! Staff members work the event and we
recruit many volunteers to help put the festival together! We set up tables and
chairs outside for the numerous booths, have lectures going all day in our
indoor space, set up the classroom for bear puppet making and balloon tying,
and have an outdoor station for hanging a bear bag.

We have someone dedicated to keeping count of the people who show up, staff members that coordinate with local businesses to sponsor door prizes, we stock our gift shop with bear merchandise, and organize with local partners who show up to tell a specific part of the “living with bears” story. This year we weren’t expecting the number of people we had, so that was fun to navigate the large crowd, but I think everyone here pulled it off. The trash cans were overflowing the first year, so we learned that lesson and made sure to have that checked periodically throughout the day. Fortunately, we’ve lucked out with good weather—because most of the festival is outdoors, a major downpour could throw a major wrench into the day.

You could create your very own bear puppet to take home and go on adventures with.

What partnerships have you developed that help with the success of this event?

This festival wouldn’t be as successful
without our amazing partners. Local National Park Service sites, Bandelier
National Monument and Manhattan Project National Historical Site, attend the
festival along with the US Forest Service, New Mexico Game and Fish, Sierra
Club, the Sandia Mountain Bear Collaborative, and Land of Enchantment Wildlife
Foundation (LEWF). LEWF was our initial partner and one of the driving forces
behind the festival. We couple the festival with a dinner the evening before
that is an “Eat Like a Bear Buffet” where we have foods that represent what
bears should and shouldn’t eat. LEWF does bear rehab around the state, so they
are incredibly knowledgeable and a fantastic partner for the event.

Our partners at the county also took more interest in Bear Festival this year and wanted to help us promote it. They had their public relations and marketing contractors spread our press release to their connections throughout the state to attract a broader audience and helped promote the event on social media.

What advice would you give to colleagues in your field who are struggling to create a successful annual event?

Find partners who have expertise that you
don’t and partner on an event that highlights both of your strengths. Our
organization is known for its educational and adult programming and for our nature
center itself, while LEWF is known for the work they do with bears and animal
rehabilitation. There was a synergy to what we both do and we combined both of
our strengths to organize the festival. We took a gamble for the first Bear Festival
and now this annual event has become one of our largest events.

Identify a need or important issue, like we
did with the bears in town, and create an event that allows people to have fun while
gaining skills/knowledge. Having special programs before the event and writing news
articles, blogs, and social media posts leading up to it helped us immensely. These
hit different demographics and all culminated in the large event. Build up to
the major festival rather than just advertising that it is happening on some
date in the future. This takes some work, but it will give people an incentive
to go or at least help get past the question we all ask when deciding to go to
an event: “Why would I want to attend?”

You can capitalize on local news and identify needs that way as well. We received calls about bears and there were photos in the local newspaper of all the bears in our neighborhoods, so we knew this was something that people were aware of and captured the community’s interest.

Loving bears and having fun is what this event was all about.

What is your favorite thing to experience during this event?

Seeing the kids running around in bear hats
and having fun pretending to be bears! I also think all of the conversations
about what people plan to do when they leave to be better neighbors to our
furry friends is a definite highlight.

I also think it is fun seeing all of our partners working together toward a common goal. It’s great to have a festival with a well-defined focus and theme.

There are lots of ways to express your appreciation for these magnificent creatures.

What is the best compliment you have heard from a visitor about their experience at this event?

One of our volunteers that planted an amazing
garden at our nature center came to the event after encountering a bear while
gardening one morning. He was at the event almost the entire four hours, sat in
almost every lecture, and even bought a piece of bear art! Every time I saw him
throughout the day, he had a huge smile on his face. He came up to me after the
event and raved about it! He said he had so much fun, that it was one of his
favorite events, and that he was amazed at how incredible bears are — he even
thanked me for organizing the festival.

We also had a grandmother come up and tell us
that her granddaughter attended the first Bear Festival three years ago. Since
then, the granddaughter insists on coming to Bear Festival programs every year
and still carries around the stuffed bear she got three years ago at the
festival.

Learning about bears is fun for the whole family.
However, some of the best outcomes have been
an initiative by the County to replace old trashcans and dumpsters with bear
resistant ones.