Volunteers gear up for Halloween in Winooski, and you’re invited

Volunteers are needed to help make the iconic Halloween in Winooski jack-o’-lantern display possible. Click here for details. Photo courtesy of Downtown Winooski.

Winooski locals are brainstorming jack-o’-lantern ideas and grabbing their crafting knives for this year's attempt to carve 1,000 pumpkins to display in Rotary Park over Halloween weekend.

“There’s something that you can’t convey in photos, you can’t convey even really in videos. When you’re there, there's something really magical and exciting about it for people of all ages, even people who aren’t really that into Halloween really love this event,” said Meredith Bay-Tyack, executive director of Downtown Winooski, which organizes the annual display and festivities.

The pumpkins will be lit on Oct. 29 and 30, but before that happens, they must be carved.

Organizers have been mobilizing volunteers to assemble the jack-o’-lantern army, and anyone is welcome to carve pumpkins for the display. Downtown Winooski is hosting all-day carving sessions this Saturday and Sunday (Oct 22 and 23) at the Winooski Senior Center. You can come to carve from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or pick up some fresh pumpkins to carve at home and return by next Wednesday.

Organizers also plan to hold a costume exchange on the carving days — in which folks can give away their old costumes and hopefully find new ones.

With a yearly goal of more than 1,000 jack-o’-lanterns, the more volunteers the better.

“Some years we’ve had hundreds of volunteers, some years we’ve had dozens,” said Bay-Tyack. “We get it done no matter how many people show up, but let me just say that when more people show up, it’s a lot more fun.”

The idea of an annual jack-o’-lantern display in Winooski has been around since 2004, when volunteer group Season’s Greetings started its Festival of Pumpkins in Smith Park. The small event grew over the years, and in 2017 the group partnered with Downtown Winooski and the city to ramp the number of jack-o’-lanterns up to 1,000 and move the festival to Rotary Park.

Downtown Winooski has been the lead organizer of the event since 2019.

The Halloweekend event will feature more festivities than just the plethora of pumpkins. ’80s-inspired band Night Protocol is slated to headline live music for the evening. And local DJ Craig Mitchell is returning to host “Kidz Klub,” a show aimed at getting kids moving to the music. This year, at the request of previous attendees, they will be playing until 10 p.m. along with other local acts.

“I think it brings people into public space to be able to enjoy it in a way that's just about throwing down and appreciating the season,” said Laura Wade, co-owner of Misery Loves Co. and Onion City Chicken and Oyster. “It feels really connected in the fact that it does take so many people to come together to make it happen.”

She has volunteered for many years and last year took home the blue ribbon for the event’s decoration contest, in which teams are judged on how well they can dress up their own 5-by-10-foot spaces in the park. Instructions and rules for entering can be found on the Halloween in Winooski 2022 website.

And for the main display, Wade wants to carve a whopping 10 pumpkins.

“Not only do we show up for the community, but the community shows up for us, and then they can show off and be like, ‘Look what we did when we came together,’” said Bay-Tyack, who met many of her neighbors at the event when she moved to Winooski with her family a few years ago.

“We want to make sure that all people feel welcome to this party,” she added.

The original story can be found on Winooski News.