What better way to show the love of your city than the announcement of a unique event that had been suspended for three years due to COVID-19? Goleta, a city just 20 years old, announced that their one-of-a-kind Dam Dinner is back.
“We are so excited for the return of the Annual Goleta Dam Dinner on Saturday, August 20th!” read its press release. “It’s been three long years since we were last able to hold this event, and we hope you will mark your calendars and join us at Lake Los Carneros Dam from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. for this low-key, yet incredibly special Goleta gathering.”
Other cities have found ways to celebrate the love of their city, a movement that began in 2009 as a church-led movement to find ways to celebrate who they were by bringing people together. County fairs have done that traditionally, but it has been more difficult in urban, less agricultural settings.
The Loveourcities.org NGO was set up to facilitate these events touts on its website. At these community-wide volunteer days, people engage in a variety of projects, including appreciating public servants, visiting convalescent homes, donating blood, building a house with Habitat for Humanity, and working in city parks and schools, among other opportunities.
“We’ve done this every year since then and have helped more than 100 cities do the same, said the Loveourcities organization. “Over 239,000 people have been involved … young, old, abled, disabled; people from a church or no church at all. Around 1 million volunteer hours have been donated – this is over $32 million dollars in service (independentsector.org) that we’ve given to our communities!”
This free community event offers live music in a beautiful outdoor setting while getting to enjoy dinner with friends and neighbors.
“It was really at the Love of Cities event that Peter Kageyama (guest speaker), a lecturer and consultant on forming such events, talked about placemaking,” said Valerie Cantella, onetime Goleta city press maven. “The City hosted the event at the Goleta Valley Community Center and we offered dinner. Peter spoke and then we did roundtable discussions of ideas that could make Goleta have more of an identity/place feeling. Peter shared pictures of the dinner on a bridge in some city (maybe elsewhere) and we got the idea to do dinner at the Dam.”
You can bring your own picnic dinner or purchase dinner from a local food truck. Wine, beer and lemonade will be for sale. Attendees can also purchase a Dam Dinner t-shirt along with the City’s 20-Year merchandise (t-shirts, hats, totes and mugs),” touted Goleta’s call to the upcoming Dam Dinner at Lake Carneros.
Harlan Green © 2022
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