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Red Earth Festival Moving To Remington Park

Red Earth

TheRed Earth Festival, now in its 28th year will be making a move from downtown Oklahoma City to Remington Park, where the wide open spaces, and that means parking spaces, will be a better fit for all attending.

Eric Oesch has been with the Festival since the beginning, he’s the deputy director for Red Earth Incorporated. He sees this move as a way to make it easier for all concerned.

“It’s a beautiful facility located at the crossroads of I40 and I35 in northeast Oklahoma City's ‘adventure district.’ Since it’s been purchased by the Chickasaw Nation its sparkling clean with beautiful landscaping,” Oesch said. “They've put tens of millions of dollars into renovating the facility, so it will be a beautiful space for us.”

“One of the things that is a real plus about our new location is all our guests to the Red Earth Festival will be given free parking and free valet parking as well,” Oesch said.

Remington Park, besides being a horse racetrack, has been host to boxing matches, music concerts and other events. A large stage is erected for these other venues and that is where the powwow dancing and contests will be held.

“One of the things thats really interesting and fun about Remington Park is that they have over 700 televisions monitors and they have that huge big screen television on the track side,” Oesch said. “All of the dance will be simulcast so that no matter where you are in the building you'll be able to see the dance going on and the competitions going on.”

On the track side of Remington Park will be continuous music, musical performances, and bands.

“We'll have our own food vendors and then we'll have children's activities. We will use the club house level and the ground floor level, track side north and track side south, for our artist's booths,” Oesch said.

“So we'll have about the same number of booths that we've had the last several years. We'll have all the art indoors, we'll have the dance, we'll have all the free parking, children's activities, food, musical performances.”

Red Earth will be held June 5, 6 and 7 and has become a Thursday through Saturday event.

“That's a new thing for us too, we'll open up on Thursday with a preview of all the artwork and the art awards on Thursday night from 6 until 10pm. Then we'll be open all day Friday from 10 until 7pm and Saturday from 10 until 7pm, so it will be a new experience for us.”

This is a new trend in the powwow world in Oklahoma, to end earlier, allowing people to get home at a decent hour.

“We have people that travel from all over the country to Red Earth and one of the things that we've heard is that people have to take off that Monday and so many people have to work,” Oesch said.

“So we think that by having our event end on a Saturday it would be more convenient for people that travel to Oklahoma to attend and for people who come to participate. So it’s a good move. We're just really looking forward to it. I think its going to be a great year.”

Oesch said all this information will be listed on their website www.redearth.org in the upcoming weeks.

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