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Across the street from Recess Coffee, dancers in white outfits and colorful ribbons beckoned fairgoers to join their participatory dance. Passersby on Harvard Place and the adjoining Westcott Street watched as dancers and residents joined in on the movement chock-full of jumps, claps and chants.

The dancers were a part of the Bassett Street Hounds, a Morris dance group inspired by medieval styles of the Welsh English border, facilitated by Mike Miller. Miller and Susan Galbraith, squire of the Bassett Street Hounds, have come to the Westcott Street Cultural Fair every year since its founding in 1991.

“It’s a wonderful event where the community comes together. We always enjoy being part of this,” Galbraith said.

The Westcott Street Cultural Fair is an annual event held in Syracuse’s Westcott neighborhood. The fair serves as a celebration of the community’s diversity through art, live performances, food and more. Started 33 years ago, the event invites thousands of people from the greater community to the Westcott area.

The Bassett Street Hounds look forward to the fair each year, Galbraith said, because it spreads the group’s feel-good sentiment.

“We’re here because we have fun,” Miller said. “Our theme is to enjoy ourselves.”

The Bassett Street Hounds are just one of the many groups that look forward to the annual celebration in Westcott. Small businesses and local vendors line the streets of the neighborhood.

Two vendors, Del Taylor and Sana Hart of Delion Creations, are best friends. Taylor has been selling her handmade resin figures, soaps and macrame projects at the fair for five years. This year is the first time she has had her own booth with Hart.

Hart said Taylor has been an encouraging presence in her life, being the reason she started crafting for the first time this year. The two said the fair is the perfect place to express creativity in the community in which they live.

“I’m a Syracusan and I am a Westcott baby and I always will be,” Hart said. “You cannot come to this and not feel loved.”

A variety of interest groups, nonprofit organizations and elected officials joined the myriad of vendors and performers at the fair.

Aaron Hammer | Staff Photographer

A street performer captured the attention of many fairgoers. Many performers added to the Fair’s lively and artistic atmosphere.

FAIRNY, a nonprofit group, hosted a booth with information regarding LGBTQ resources in the Syracuse area. Co-coordinator of the LGBTQ Booth, Bonnie Strunk, handed out a networking guide at the booth and encouraged donations to support the organization in its goals of equity within New York.

“We view this as an opportunity to reach out to allies, as well as the LGBTQ community,” Strunk said. “Everybody’s here. Everybody’s having a great time.”

Moving down Westcott Street, fairgoers clapped along to soulful music playing from the Greater Rescue Apostolic Church Evangelistic Ministries booth. Young members of the ministry, called G.R.A.C.E. Anointed Worshippers, performed interpretive dances and encouraged citizens to visit the table for coffee and words of spiritual affirmation.

In their fourth year at the Westcott Street Cultural Fair, Youth Pastor Dion Oliver said the fair is an important place for the organization to build community, spread love and teach about the value of religion.

“It’s just in this time, in this season, to be able to show the love of Christ to a community that’s hurting in a whole lot of ways, is a blessing,” Apostle Rosalind Little said.

Like Little connects with members of her faith, Syracuse City Auditor Alex Marion said the fair gives him an opportunity to connect with the broad range of people that he oversees as an elected official. The celebration features the diversity of the Westcott community through numerous organizations and neighborhood-led groups, he said.

Marion said he hopes members of the community continue planning events like the fair.

“I want to encourage folks to keep coming out to this and supporting it year after year after year because this is what makes our vibrant city such a great place to live,” Marion said.

Published on September 23, 2024 at 1:22 am