City To Host First Ever Halloween Parade On Columbus Drive
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Hoping to turn Halloween into Chicago's next big thing, Michigan Avenue businesses and city officials have announced a first of its kind festival and nighttime parade this October.
The Art Institute of Chicago hosted a preview of the city's newest festival on Tuesday, complete with music, costumes, and fanfare outside the Michigan Avenue art museum.
The new Halloween Gathering on Oct. 24 will feature mask making, pop-up installations, a children's costume parade, and more.
"There will be workshops. We're going to have a kids' parade around the ribbon at Maggie Daley Park. We'll have live and free theater performances, dance performances," said Sharene Shariatzadeh, executive director of the Chicago Cultural Mile.
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She said the daylong celebration will showcase Chicago's cultural community.
Halloween Gathering artistic director Mark Kelly said the day will end with a nighttime parade down Columbus Drive.
"We are going to blow your minds, and we're going to celebrate the heart and soul of this city," he said.
Kelly said Halloween is the "artists" holiday, so why not celebrate the cultural community?
"It's a moment of conjuring, wrestling with the spirits, wrestling with mortality, lightness begins to fade, darkness looms, and we all must come together to represent. It is when the artists' persona of thinking and temperament comes alive," he said.
The Halloween Gathering will begin at 2 p.m. on Oct. 24, along the Chicago Cultural Mile, which runs along Michigan Avenue from the Chicago River to Roosevelt Road, and east to the Museum Campus.
