FireFish Gets Ready For A Second Run

Organizers of the year old FireFish Festival in Downtown Lorain are getting ready for a second installment. 

This plan is to pass through Downtown Lorain again, past the boarded up shops on Broadway Avenue, some of which will be temporarily inhabited by art exhibits. And then it’ll make its way down to the Black River. Last year, the procession included the burning of a large cardboard fish…the Fire Fish.

Organizer Daniel McNamara says the festival was born as a way to celebrate the arts with the sort of spectacle not often seen in Lorain.

“And then once it was all built and started to come together it became clear that we were going to have to burn it as the big festival culmination," says McNamara.

Teenage students are already working on this year’s fish in an empty storefront on Broadway. Organizers are planning on having more artists and musicians and temporary galleries. And a bigger fish. McNamara says the festival is part of a larger plan to revitalize this steel-mill town through the arts.

“And if everyone can feel invested in the Broadway and everyone can feel welcome on Broadway and everyone can feel invested in the river and everyone can feel welcome at the river then, even for one day, it gives people a taste," says McNamara.

The plan is to burn the fish out on the Black River, instead of in the parking lot they used last year. The FireFish Festival is scheduled for September 17 in Lorain.