For the last year, Spotlight Delaware has been publishing a series of stories called
“Our Delaware,” revealing the history of communities around the First State and the ties that bind us together. Now, we are bringing those communities, and more, together in our first holiday festival.
The Our Delaware Cultural Festival will celebrate the people we’ve met along the way and the vibrant diversity of Delaware with cultural performances, a holiday market, family-friendly activities, and food.
Kids under 18 get in free, and tickets are good for the duration of the event. Tickets will be sold at the door, but we highly encourage you to get your tickets in advance in the event we sell out.
In the latest Beyond the Headlines podcast, Spotlight Delaware Editor-In-Chief Jacob Owens and Marketing and Events Manager Elsa Kegelman take listeners behind the scenes of the festival. They explain the origin of the Our Delaware story series, how it morphed into an in-person event and what attendees can expect.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Hello and welcome to a special bonus edition of Beyond the Headlines, a Spotlight Delaware podcast, where we take you inside the story and into the minds of our reporters. I’m Jacob Owens, editor in chief.
And I’m Elsa Kegelman, marking and events manager.
Today, we’re stepping in as co-host for our colleague David Stradley, who’s away on Thanksgiving break.
And while we’ll be talking a little about reporting, we’ll mainly be taking you behind the scenes as we prepare for the first Our Delaware Cultural Festival taking place on Sunday, Dec. 7, at Arsht Hall in Wilmington.
So let’s get to it. Let’s start with the reporting. So Jake, this event is inspired by the Our Delaware series of articles that you and the reporters have been writing for more than a year now.
Can you tell us about your original idea for the Our Delaware series?
I think when we first launched Spotlight Delaware, we obviously were doing a lot of investigative and government accountability kind of reporting. But, I remember being at a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Kingswood Community Center in Wilmington two summers ago.
And, as I was standing and listening and taking photos of the proceedings, it really dawned on me there was a different kind of story happening here.
I was there to see what new leadership was saying about this section of the city. Not necessarily about the project in particular, but I was really struck by the stories that were being shared by people who have lived in this community on Wilmington’s Eastside for generations. They were talking about when they first opened the Kingswood Community Center and what it meant to them and how it’s kind of gone through different iterations over the years.
So it really kind of struck me as a good way to explore communities and organizations as a kind of touchstone in our state that we maybe don’t always pay attention to, but we should. A lot of these things are the kinds of things that really kind of become the ties that bind more than the things that divide us.
Can you speak a little bit more about some of the articles, some of the communities that have stood out to you over the last year and a half of writing these?
We’ve done about a story a month for the last year. We’ve really covered a variety of different grounds and the idea has morphed and changed over the months as we’ve leaned into different communities, minority groups and organizations in the state.
But, one of the first ones that really kind of stood out to me was the Chinese American Community Center in Hockessin.
We explored this immigrant story where Y.F. Lou, who’s a fairly well-known Christina school board member, is also the son of somebody who came to Delaware decades ago. And, this cultural center really served as a gathering place for his community. It was really interesting to explore that idea.
Similarly, I recall a story about the Haitian community that our reporter Jose Ignacio wrote a couple months ago that really explored this community that’s grown to be quite sizable in our state and yet maybe doesn’t get much coverage.
It was really interesting to hear how people were fleeing some of the worst conditions in their lives to come somewhere where there was opportunity. They’ve kind of banded together and, and created organizations and landing points for recent refugees and immigrants as well.
Now there’s now quite a vibrant community from Smyrna all the way to Seaford for the Haitian community. So, that one also stood out in my mind.
When the Spotlight team was coming up with events for 2025, you had the idea to make an in-person gathering inspired by this series. What was in your mind when you proposed that idea?
I think we had talked about how Spotlight really has kind of two kinds of events. One is very policy-oriented, like our Legislative Summit or our Shifting Sands event. Then we have things that really aim to create connection and bring the community together, like our Family Fun Day that was successful in bringing families out to see places they hadn’t seen in Delaware.
As we were thinking about another event that could bring people together, perhaps during the holiday season, I was thinking a lot about the Our Delaware series we’d been writing and how it often exposed people to communities they maybe hadn’t thought much about or had any interaction with.
So it kind of dawned on me that maybe there would be room for a festival where we can really celebrate what Delaware has become in 2025. As, I think about my childhood growing up here and the childhood that my kids have here, we have a lot of cultural festivals, but what if we did a festival that was like all the festival mixed up into one?
Then I think you, David and the team were like, “Whoa. Why don’t we start with something smaller and build the test case.”
And so we really settled on this idea of taking the Our Delaware series and really trying to expand it, and introduce groups and cultures and food and music to people that maybe they wouldn’t have otherwise experienced them.
This year’s Our Delaware Cultural Festival takes place on Dec. 7, which is Delaware Day. Was that intentional?
It was intentional.
Delaware has this small, proud history here, but Delaware Day is kind of this forgotten little spot in the calendar, and I just thought, “What better way to kind of pay homage to the founders of our state all the way to where we are in the present day and celebrate the vibrant cultures that make up the patchwork that is Delaware today.“
And what better time to do it than in early December whenmany groups are quiet on their calendar ahead of the holidays.
And what is Delaware Day for people who might not know?
Delaware Day, of course, is the day when Delaware ratified the Constitution in 1787, becoming the first state in the nation.
So is this a community event or is this a journalism event?
Well, you tell me. How did you and David take my initial idea and really develop it into what is waiting for the community on Dec. 7?
I think you spoke to it already when you brought up all these cultural festivals that Delaware has, particularly in the summer. From June into July, you get the Greek festival and the Italian festival, and those are just the ones up here in Wilmington.
We were also reasonably confident that we could get representatives from each of the Our Delaware featured communities gathered under one roof, where we could feature them as our honored guests. We’ll also have communities who have yet to be featured, but who also contribute so much to the community, culture, and economy of Delaware.
So we started by getting in touch with as many of these communities as we could think of. We made a list, I made a list of a bunch of churches. I, you know, just started Googling, extensively about all these different culture clubs and organizations up and down the state and started reaching out.
We’re gonna have at least six of the Our Delaware featured communities attending the festival. They’ll have their own tables, where they’ll get to talk to people. We’ll also have a passport where you can go to each table and, if you talk with everyone and have them stamp your passport, you can be entered to win a prize.
We’re also going to have a holiday market there. That was something that I thought would be an important aspect for a December festival to have – people are going to be shopping for the gift-giving season. And so I thought, what better way than to ask some of these featured communities?
So we’re gonna have some different Delaware Division of the Arts’ featured artists and other local artisan and craftspeople that Our Delaware featured communities have referred us to.
And some people have started coming outta the woodwork and saying, “Hey, this event sounds really cool. Can I come and be a vendor?” So we’re really excited about that.
Then, of course, we gotta have stuff for the kids. So we’re going to have face painting, balloon art and some coloring. We’re gonna have a Spotlight Delaware news-themed photo booth, as well as some other crafts and things for kids.
And that all is free, because we wanted to make sure that this could be as accessible of an event as possible for people.
Especially if people are gonna be traveling up from other parts of the state, we wanted to make sure that when they get there, they’re not getting nickel and dimed.
Remind me once again, where is it taking place and what time?
It’s going to be at Arsht Hall, which is actually the University of Delaware’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute campus at 2700 Pennsylvania Ave. in Wilmington. Parking is very accessible.
It’s happening on Sunday, Dec. 7, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
And I know, that’s right in the middle of lunch. Well, don’t worry. We will have food trucks there: Zaikka on Wheels halal and Mediterranean food and Rice & Beans from Aliza’s Kitchen, which serves Puerto Rican cuisine. I had her food at the Brandywine Festival of the Arts, and it was amazing.
Thank you so much, Elsa. I look forward to being there. I hope you will too.
Oh yeah. It’s gonna be a blast.