The Seventh Annual Nuart Block Party will happen Sept. 8, at the Nuart Theater. The party will feature Christian music from Hawk Nelson, Manafest, The Lacks, Ergo Rex, Soulwinna, Joal Kamps and Katie Ainge and is free
to attend.
hawk nelson press kit | courtesy
“We just decided, we wanted to do kind of a welcome back party for the students,” said Eric Engerbretson, manager of the Nuart Theater. “Because a lot of times, each fall, you get a big bunch of people who don’t know what this place is. They don’t know what the Nuart is or what it is about.”
The Nuart Theater is a non-profit inter-denominational ministry that operates in downtown Moscow. Engerbretson said that Nuart also offers free Christian based counseling for anyone who is interested.
“The Nuart is a place about spirituality,” he said. “We have all of these books on philosophy and spirituality and the Christian perspective on things.”
The party will take place between Fifth and Sixth Street from 2 p.m.-9 p.m. The stage will be located in between One World Cafe and Neely’s Travel. Engerbretson said the party will have activities for children such as a clown making balloon animals and a bounce house. The block party will have $1 hamburgers and cheeseburgers.
The event is free but it is requested that church goers contribute donations to help cover the cost of the event.
“Basically, the minute you charge a ticket price then the only people that are going to come are Christians and we are not interested in meeting more Christians,” Engerbretson said. “We want to meet with non-Christians and talk with people and that’s why we keep the festival free.”
The exact times of which bands will be playing when will be available a couple days before the block party.
“We have kind of found that if we put (the band schedule) up too early that a lot of people will come for the one band they want to hear,” Engerbretison said. “And what happens when they come for the whole day they discover a lot of new bands that they didn’t know they would like.”
Past bands that have played at the Block Party include Sanctus Real, The Afters, DecemRadio and Sons of Day. Engerbretison said that every year The Lacks play and bring different national bands to Nuart as part of The Extreme Tour.
Engerbretson said that around 2,000 people normally attend each year. He said that in the past people have come in buses from as far as Portland, Lewiston, and Grangeville to attend the block party.
“That’s one of the neat things about the festival,” he said. “It ends up being an activity where all the churches in town can kind of get together and rub shoulders where normally churches get together and normally do things with their own group of people.”
Aleya Ericson can be reached at a[email protected]