Procession of the Species canceled again, but Arts Walk will go on this spring

For the third year in a row, Olympia’s Procession of the Species — a celebration that filled downtown streets with music, dance and colorful flora and fauna and helped put Olympia on the creative map — has been canceled.

“We are still in a pandemic,” procession leader Eli Sterling wrote in a letter posted on the event’s website. “And as our communications with Thurston County Health have brought to the fore, we are only in the early stages of the present recovery.”

Before COVID-19, the event coincided with the city’s spring Arts Walk, which is still planned this year as both a month-long event and a street party set for April 22 and 23.

Sterling, whose vision of Procession has always extended far beyond the banners, costumes and human-powered floats that draw most of the attention, is encouraging fans and supporters to celebrate in a quieter and more private way.

“What the Procession stands for can still exist in our community,” he told The Olympian. “We can do the procession without doing the Procession.” In the letter, he suggested volunteering at nonprofits, planting trees or picking up trash on beaches.

Arts Walk, meanwhile, might look similar to the one last fall, including arts events throughout the month and a more focused celebration centered around Fifth Avenue and Legion Way over one weekend.

The city is taking Arts Walk registrations for locations looking to feature artists or events in their space through Feb. 28, and it is offering a pay-what-you-can model for fees — more changes inspired by the ongoing pandemic.

“With the Omicron surge, we pushed out registration,” said Arts Walk organizer Angel Nava. “Typically, we do registration for the spring event in January, but in January, numbers were really high.

“The hope is that with the February registration month, folks have a little bit more flexibility to do cool things.”

Plans for those cool things are, as Nava put it, “squishy.”

In October, a one-day street closure — at which social distancing and masks were part of the landscape — made space for games, performances, a silent disco, a pop-up skate park and an opportunity to conduct musicians from the Olympia Symphony Orchestra and Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia.

Nava hopes that the spring event will be on a slightly larger scale, but the city needed to plan to accommodate the possible twists and turns that have scrambled so many plans over the past two years.

“The smaller street closures can move forward, because we can still be spaced out,” she told The Olympian.

“We have an amazing turnout for Procession,” she added. “Our community really loves it and misses it. It’s not time yet.”

In his letter to the Procession’s supporters and fans, Sterling struck a similar tone.

“It is always a pleasure to hear (that) friends and neighbors still hold the kindness and intention of the Procession upon their horizons,” he wrote. “And there is a horizon. And that horizon is 2023.”

He added another upbeat message when he spoke to The Olympian: “Keep your papier-mâché at the ready.”

Olympia Arts Walk

• What: The beloved twice-yearly celebration of community and creativity is set to happen.
• When: Registration for businesses and artists is open through Feb. 28. Street closures and outdoor activities are in the works for April 22 and 23, with exhibits and other events all month long.
• Where: Throughout Olympia. For the weekend event, centered on downtown, the city plans to close Washington Street between Fifth Avenue and Legion Way.
• More information: https://www.artswalkoly.com/

This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 5:00 AM.