Raw States
Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts
State College, PA · Arts & Culture
- When
- July 14–18, 2027
- Where
- Downtown State College and Penn State University Park campus · State College · PA
- Cost
- Not confirmed
- Status
- Approximate: based on past editions, not announced yet
Downtown State College and the Penn State campus fill with juried artists, street performers and a children's parade each July for this five day arts festival, one of the largest in the mid-Atlantic. More than 300 independent artists set up for the Sidewalk Sale and Exhibition. The festival has run annually since 1967, and the 2026 edition marked its 60th year.
The history within reach
Downtown State College and the Penn State campus fill with juried artists, street performers and a children's parade each July for this five day arts festival, one of the largest in the mid-Atlantic.
Three women decorated soldiers' graves here in October 1864, and Boalsburg has claimed the birth of Memorial Day ever since, a claim contested by two dozen towns and settled by Congress in favor of Waterloo, New York, which Boalsburg regards as a clerical error.
Piper built the Cub here from 1937, a fabric-and-tube trainer simple enough to teach most of America's wartime pilots their first hour, and cheap enough to be called the Model T of the air.
- The Slinky factory37 mi
A naval engineer watched a torsion spring walk off a shelf in 1943 and his wife Betty named the result out of a dictionary.
John Rich built a woolen mill on Chatham Run in 1830 and sold fabric from a mule cart to lumber camps.