Somerville to Host SustainaVille Tiny Great Outdoors Festival

SOMERVILLE, MA – The inaugural SustainaVille Week kicks off this weekend with a citywide cleanup Saturday, followed by the Tiny Great Outdoors Festival on Sunday. The free Arbor Day event explores the "urban wild" of the Quincy Street Open Space, 16 Quincy Street.

The festivities run from 12-2 p.m. this Sunday, April 30. In the event of rain, the event will be held the following Sunday.

Join scientists on tiny hikes in the park exploring the local wildlife, learn how global warming is changing the environment, help plant a tree and take home a free seedling and participate in activities, games and art.

The Tiny Great Outdoors Festival is the brainchild of Greg Cook, a freelance event planner who was the brains Somerville's Pity Party in 2015 and Tiny Tall Ships Festival last year. The idea of the festival is to celebrate "urban wilds," a term for small pockets of nature within cities.

Visitors to the festival can plant trees with City of Somerville Urban Forestry and Landscape Planner Vanessa Boukili, paint animals with Somerville artist Johanna Finnegan-Topitzer and try out worm-bin composting with Groundwork Somerville. Learn how we can reduce our carbon output and live more sustainably by playing educational games presented by the city’s SustainaVille program.

Somerville artist Rachel Mello will exhibit art depicting bees, ants, and inch-worms made from recycled advertising banners to address reuse and recycling.

The following experts will lead hikes:

• Bryan Hamlin, former chairman of the Friends of the Middlesex Fells and past president of the New England Botanical Club, who has helped lead a census of all the plants in the Fells
• Sasha Vivelo, a Ph.D. student in Boston University’s Department of Biology researching how the growth of mushrooms and other fungi affect ecosystems and climate
• Jef Taylor, of Boston’s Urban Nature Walks group, a naturalist specializing in urban wildlife, bugs, mushrooms, creepy crawlies, and weird stuff, who has been leading hikes around these parts since 2003
• Rachel Taylor, the City of Somerville’s Animal Control Officer and Inspector
• Vanessa Boukili, an urban forestry and landscape planner and conservation agent for the City of Somerville

For questions about the festival, please contact Special Events Manager, Nina Eichner at 617-625-6600 ext. 2998.

Photo: Taxiarchos228 (Own work) [FAL], via Wikimedia Commons