Community outreach is an important tenet of the Revels organization as shown by our mission statement:
Portland Revels celebrates the seasons through song, dance, story and ritual of the past and present, creating community across generations and cultures.
Portland Revels recently participated in two distinctly Portland community building activities, the 20th annual Portland Polish Festival (September 21 & 22, 2013) organized by Portland Polonia and the Visegrad Festival (November 9, 2013) at the Polish Hall in Portland. The members of this vibrant community including Polish, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian and other cultures have participated in the Polish Festival for nearly 20 years. This year some of the Portland Revels board attended the Polish Festival to help celebrate these ethnicities and invite them to attend this year’s Christmas Revels production of A Christmas in Old Europe. Several of the board members also attended the inaugural Visegrad Festival held at the Polish Hall to hand out show flyers and raffle away music, tickets to the Christmas Revels show and to the upcoming Eric Stern Concert on Friday, November 22nd.

Margo Norton, Portland Revels Board Member
For the Visegrad Festival, members of the Czech, Polish and Hungarian communities in Portland gathered to celebrate the 95th anniversary (1918) of independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To honor that milestone in their collective countries, these three communities gathered for the first annual Visegrad Group PDX Festival at the Polish Hall in north Portland on Saturday, November 9, 2013, 1-7 PM. There was food, music, singing and dancing and a great time was had by all!

Polish participants
What a fun time! A great part of the Revels experience is making new friends in diverse cultural communities.