Welcome to the 2025 Big Rapids Festival of the Arts! We look forward to sharing another February full of the arts with you - our 18th full-month festival. As always, we have a calendar full of concerts, lectures, exhibits, demonstrations, and hands-on workshops for you to take part in and enjoy - more than 75 different events all packed into the shortest month of the year. And other than some workshop fees to cover materials, all of our events are presented free of charge!

While our programming includes several favorite events, such as Artworks artist demonstrations, knitting workshops, Big Rapids Garden Club speakers, Wee Wonders art for kids, and Ferris State University’s Festival closing concert, we're excited to share dozens of new events with you! Concerts by cowboy music sensation Phoebe White, Embellish handbells, Brazilian ensemble Duo VibraCor, jazz group Paxton/Spangler Band, Georgian musicians Sandro Sidamonidze and Elena Kobulashvili, Big Rapids band Hand of Giants, and more. Workshops in writing, beading, cooking, printmaking, charcuterie creating, iconography, and more. Presentations on women and S.T.E.M., chimney swifts, Eddie VanHalen, South American travel, Michigan lighthouses, and more. And more. You get the idea!

This year we’re particularly excited to offer several events exploring the relationship between the arts and our health. Corewell Health once again offers a presentation on healthy eating; Emily Peterson and Katy Jaramillo talk about the fields of music and art therapy; Knitters Anonymous feature a physical therapist at one of their sessions to speak about the ergonomics of healthy knitting; Chris Jane presents the health benefits of participating in a drum circle; and we even present four different organ concerts (okay, maybe not exactly health-related, but they are organs!).