Parade the Circle

For 25 years, the Cleveland Museum of Art has been sponsoring this fun event at Wade Oval - right near Case Western Reserve University, University Hospital and Cleveland Clinic, and many of the premier Cleveland museums.

It is a really pretty and culturally diverse area of the city that we enjoy visiting, but this was our first time attending this parade.

The parade includes artists, families, schools, and community groups in a moving display of costumes, giant puppets, stilt dancers, handmade masks, and colorful floats.  Anyone can participate in the parade but all the entries must be handmade by the paraders.

We got lucky with a good parking space and a viewing place right on the curb and then Grace and I went to explore the vendor tents at Circle Village.  We spent a lot of time creating our own art work which we both mailed to President Obama.  They even displayed a letter from the White House in response to the art and postcards they received after last year's parade!

We also got to see some of the costumes and floats in the staging area before the parade began.

I'd say about half of the parade entires were really unique and creative art.

This group was bowling pins.  Cute!

Remember...all the costumes are hand-made.

Some of the groups handed things to the crowd, others came up for "high-fives", and some invited the kids to jump rope or go under their parachute. Grace was happy to run out there as much as possible!

After the parade, when we were walking to Little Italy for a late lunch, Grace commented that she was "inspired" by the bulls.  She meant this costume. They were very cool and Grace watched carefully to see how the people inside were operating them.

With all the music and drums in the parade, their theme - BEAT: to beat, to breathe, to create - was appropriate today.