This Weekend CT Kicks Off Festival Season With Music, Food, Art & More

CONNECTICUT — Festival season is upon Connecticut, and that means music, food, art and… rodeos? This weekend, there's a fest for every taste, if you know where to look.

The festival festivities begin Friday at noon at the intersection of Pratt and Trumbull Streets in Downtown Hartford, with the start of the annual Hartford Taste Street Festival.

This street festival is always heavy on art, and does not disappoint this year. Hartford Creates, the local arts council, is funding an "Instagrammable" series of mini-murals, and the community will have the opportunity to contribute to several mini-murals that will be displayed around downtown Hartford at vacant storefronts. The selection of foods from local restaurants is varied and substantial, and over a dozen musical acts will be performing live at multiple locations throughout the weekend. The festival, noon to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, goes down, rain or shine.

What do you do with a drunken sailor? This weekend, you send him to the 2024 Connecticut Sea Music Festival spread out throughout Essex, from Friday through Monday. Daytime events at the traditional maritime folk festival are free, with donations accepted, and evening concerts are ticketed. Try to catch some or all of the free Symposium on the Music of the Sea, to be held at the Essex Town Hall from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. on Friday.

There'll be less brine and more bass across the two stages at the 10th Annual Localpalooza Music & Art Festival in Bethany, on Saturday, June 8. Three Saints Park is the venue, which this weekend will see the reunion of Mighty Purple. (If you know, you know…) Artists will be creating in an art tent, and there's even a "Kids Korner" with arts and crafts activities to keep the littlest ones amused. Proceeds support the local music and art scene. Gates open at 11:00 a.m., and the show starts at 11:30 a.m. The festival is rain or shine, and tickets are available online here.

There's a brand-new festival debuting this weekend in Olde Mistick Village, no stranger to sprawling street fairs. The 1st Annual Strawberry Festival will be "celebrating all things strawberries" throughout the village on both Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Restaurants and food trucks from all around the area will be showcasing their finest and most creative strawberry-based concoctions (think strawberry shortbread, strawberry cookies, and strawberry lemon tea bread from Standish Brook Farm in Colchester; hard cider and strawberry wine from Yankee Cider Company in East Haddam; strawberry cheesecakes from Manchester Cheesecake Company, and nearly three dozen more vendors.) Crafters will also be selling their wares, and there will be special activities for children as well.

Looking for something a little less New England-y? How's a rodeo sound? The 18th Annual Goshen Stampede offers two, along with a demolition derby, monster truck rally, equestrian exhibitions and a truck-pull with both amateur and professional truck-pulling drivers. The three-day music festival at the Goshen Fairgrounds will also include plenty of activities for the smaller cowpokes, including carnival rides. The full calendar of events is here, and tickets are available here.

The 8th Annual Catherine's Butterfly Party and Mega Pet Adoption will be Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. Each year, the Catherine Violet Hubbard Sanctuary brings hundreds of adoptable animals to potential "furever homes" at no cost to the rescues, making this the premier pet adoption event in the area. To sweeten the deal, there's a full schedule of presentations (including military K-9 demonstrations) and children's activities. The Fairfield Hills campus at 3 Primrose Street in Newtown will be plastered with food trucks, naturally, as well as a number of vendors you probably would not expect.