Indigo celebrates with outdoor fall festival
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Kelly Spencer at Indigo Lounge and Wellness Centre discovered on Saturday that if you ‘build’ an Outdoor Fall Festival, vendors and customers will come.
“This summer would have been our ninth annual Indigo Festival,” said Spencer. “We usually hold it in May or June on the anniversary of when I opened … and we didn’t do it this year.”
The idea for an October festival came after a couple of favourable weather weekends, and knowing the vendors would appreciate it.
“There’s a lot of businesses … this is their means. I posted that I was going to do an outdoor fall festival and, literally, every single person here contacted me.”
About a dozen vendors set up tables on Saturday on the Indigo Lounge and Wellness Centre’s lawn in Tillsonburg. They included a psychic, a jewellery vendor, and artists.
“These two here, they are local artists,” Spencer noted. “They created this stuff themselves. This lady, she makes porcelain coasters. Deb grows and makes her own preserves. And over there, she makes masks – she was one of the first (locally). There’s crystals, blankets, leggings … lots of fun stuff.
“And I had lots of stock, so I decided to do a sale as well.”
Spencer also had specials at her Indigo Lounge Organic Café & Eatery, which partnered with the Tillsonburg BIA this summer to set up an outdoor patio at 264 Tillson Ave. Now that they’re moving back inside, they have closed some tables to allow proper spacing.
“We still have the takeout – lots of people still access that. And on the nice sunny days, we’re still having people sitting out on the patio.
“We used to have some picnic tables out there, but we’ve never had the flow that we’ve had (with the patio). Same with the outdoor classes, I can’t believe we didn’t do them earlier.”
Indigo Lounge and Wellness Centre classes, after a summer outdoors, have also started moving back inside with smaller class sizes.
“We’ve got the floor marked where you’re supposed to put your yoga mat or whatever.”
What Spencer has learned during this pandemic year is that people appreciate takeout food, and they appreciate online classes.
“I am going to bring some online classes back in the winter. Anybody who does classes knows it’s not the same as being in the collective energy of the class, but it is still a class and it still has its benefits.”
cabbott@postmedia.com
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