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Festival Information
Tall Ships on the Hudson River, sloop Clearwater and schooner Pioneer. |
This year's Clearwater festival will take place on Saturday and Sunday, June 19 and 20 at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, NY.
Clearwater's Great Hudson River Revival will feature a number of superb storytellers and family-oriented entertainers as well as juried crafts, the Green Living Expo, the Working Waterfront with small boat exhibits and rides, environmental education displays and exhibits, and the Circle of Song where audience participation is the focus. The festival is wheelchair accessible and most stage programming is staffed with American Sign Language Interpreters.
Inspired by Pete Seeger’s desire to clean up the river over forty years
ago, the Great Hudson River Revival initially helped raise the funds to
build the sloop Clearwater, which has since become a world-renowned
floating classroom and a symbol of effective grassroots action. Today,
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater is a non-profit organization that sails at
the forefront of the nation’s environmental challenges. The revenue
raised by the Revival goes to support Clearwater’s numerous educational
programs and its work toward environmental and social justice—as well as
keeping the Clearwater afloat.
Pete Seeger at the Clearwater Festival |
Mission of the Festival
Clearwater's Great Hudson River Revival is produced by the nonprofit, member-supported, environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. All proceeds go directly to support Clearwater’s
environmental research, education and advocacy efforts to help preserve
and protect the Hudson River and its tributaries, as well as communities
in the river valley.
The festival has helped over 250,000 adults experience the wonders of the Hudson River from aboard the sloop Clearwater. The organization itself has gained worldwide recognition for
its leadership in helping to pass landmark environmental laws, both
state and federal, including the Clean Water Act. Recently, Clearwater played a key role in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPAs) decision to remove PCBs from the Hudson River. This decision compels one of the Hudson River's biggest polluters to begin removing the toxic PCBs from the water, thereby expediting the amount of time before the river is restored. In 2002, Pete Seeger, the founder of
Clearwater, was named a “Clean Water Hero” for his prominent efforts in
the passage of the Clean Water Act. His tireless devotion to working
through Clearwater and promoting its message to effectively use the law
in prosecuting polluters of America’s waterways has made the Clean Water
Act perhaps the most successful environmental law in the country.
Today, seeing the success of the Clearwater organization, one cannot
imagine these achievements being possible without the Clearwater
Festival. The Great Hudson River Revival has helped raise funds and
served as a beacon toward raising awareness in support of America’s
First River. And it all started more than 35 years ago, when it was but
the dream of a banjo-picking folksinger.
History of the Festival
Back in the mid-sixties, after centuries of accumulated sewage pollution
and industrial dumping of toxic chemicals, the Hudson River, like many
of America’s most important estuaries, was declared “dead”. The river’s
fragile ecological system was devastated. Not a single fish was found in
many areas, and the level of commercial fishing hadĄdropped so
dramatically as to be regarded as nonexistent. Recognizing this
incredible social and environmental tragedy, Pete Seeger, a popular
musician and respected activist, decided “to build a boat to save the
river”. Holding small, fundraising river concerts throughout the Hudson
River Valley, he literally passed his banjo among the crowd, collecting
contributions to build the elegant tall ship that would become a symbol
of environmental advocacy, the flagship of the American Environmental
Movement, the sloop Clearwater.
This nomadic folk festival picnic continued to travel through out the
Hudson River Valley, then in 1978 the gathering set down roots at a
historic river park, Croton Point, on the Hudson River and was coined
The Great Hudson River Revival. However, ten years later, due to
pollution problems with the landfill at the park, the festival was
forced to move from the river. This move resulted in a decade of exile
inland at a suburban college campus. In 1998, however, the Clearwater
board of directors pushed to move the festival on or near the Hudson
River, and a year later the Clearwater Festival returned to its
spiritual home, the shores of the Hudson River at Croton Point Park.
Since the 1960s, the Clearwater Festival has grown into the country’s
largest annual environmental celebration, its music, dance and
storytelling, education and activism attracting thousands of people
of all ages to the shores of the Hudson River.
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