Prescott Park Arts Festival in Portsmouth, NH; You Have GOT to Experience It!

It was West Side Story when I was a kid and it may have been 1986. I remember the exciting uncertainty of knowing we were going to watch a play. Outside. At night. In the summer.

I don’t remember watching the play or the before or after of it. In fact, I do not have a single memory of this experience besides knowing we were going to do something totally different than we’d ever done.

And it was The Arts! Even way back then I was drawn to them. The creativity. The people who explored a totally different way of experiencing the world. The Arts were a foreign concept to me and one I wanted so badly to relate to.

Prescott Park Arts Festival in Portsmouth, NH Photo Credit: Jen Keefe

As I got older my family attended more and more performances. New York. Boston. Portsmouth. It’s not that I wasn’t exposed, it’s just that The Arts were not a part of me. It was something I occasionally watched and oh how I wanted to participate.

Besides singing in the car and the occasional bravery I’d feel letting loose in my journal, my whole life went by without The Arts as a part of me.

Bring in The Arts! Prescott Park Arts Festival Returns

As I entered my twenties I discovered I had the power to put more art in my life. I was still an observer, but the arts became a part of me. Performances. Arts shows. Photography. Literally more music concerts than I can count. They all helped me connect to part of myself that needed reaching. Even if it would be nearly a decade before I started to understand that creativity is who I am, attending arts events kept a piece of me alive.

When we moved back to NH from Denver before the pandemic, the timing was…. well, pandemic. Everything was closed. All was cancelled. As things started to reopen, it took a minute for me to remember all that existed in our beautiful part of the world.

Not your typical outdoor venue snacks, The Prop offers options like Poutine and Caprese Paninis!

I felt giddy excitement when a friend reminded me of the awesomeness that would descend on the Portsmouth waterfront; The Prescott Park Arts Festival! Music. Performances. Under the stars. In Portsmouth! I could hardly believe my good fortune to live here again.

I decided to buy a family season pass not only to support such a wonderful program, but to commit us to attending the shows. Our first performance was none other than Footloose!

It was a show full of talent, heart, singing, dancing, summer air, stars, salt water, and other worldly views of ships and the waterfront. I sat there with a goofy grin on my face the whole time- naturally high from getting to be there.

We ended up seeing at least a concert a week all summer long, sometimes two or three. Each night my teenage-musician-son and I would arrive early. We set up our blanket and chairs, got the cooler in position, opened our books or phones and enjoyed our time in beautiful Portsmouth while we waited for showtime. My husband and youngest kiddo would join us as the start time neared and we would all eat dinner together, outside.

Doesn’t it sound idyllic? It is.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a show that didn’t inspire me in some way, but some shows stir your soul. I don’t know if it’s the unique experience the musicians have playing a venue like Prescott Park, the incredibly grateful, chill crowd, the insanely unique setting, or a combination of all of it, but every one of these shows felt so special- like the artists knew how exceptional the place they were playing is.

Yup. That’s Amy and Emily. I’ve seen the Indigo Girls before. Seeing the Indigo Girls at Prescott Park is one of the top experiences in my life!

From Katie Pruitt and The Brothers Comatose to Sierra Hull and INDIGO GIRLS, it seemed like something washed over each musician as the sun set over the Navy Yard. I don’t think it was lost on them that a Gundalow sailing behind the crowd is the most awesome kind of abnormal. There’s something special about The Prescott Park Arts Festival and it seems to me every musician who plays there feels it.

Prescott Park Arts Festival: Community and Gratitude

The Prescott Park Arts Festival has done an incredible job building community around the arts. They have found sponsors and donors to bring to us bands who sell out other venues with full priced tickets and offer it to our community for a suggested donation. The fact that people line up at the built-by-local-hands entrances staffed by volunteers to happily pay the suggested donation -and then some- speaks volumes to the value felt by our community.

When you say “I won't be making a donation tonight” and the volunteer says “enjoy the show” with the exact same gusto as they did to the person who just selected “donate an additional $100” on the tablet, you know you are in a place that wants to make the arts accessible to all not just in theory, but in reality. The Prescott Parks Arts Festival is the most special kind of unique.

Custom constructed entrance for donation based performances at Prescott Park Arts Festival, Portsmouth NH.

Sometimes my kids sit with my husband and me for the whole show. Sometimes they meet up with friends and walk around town and the waterfront, sometimes they “walk to Maine” (which still feels so super cool to two kids who grew up out west where states are far apart). Eventually they come back to sit and listen to the music with their dad and me.

As the mom of two teens this feels like such a spectacular gift to give them. Not only are they listening to high caliber musical performances provided by their community, they are walking around the greatest little city in the world. A city that when we were living smack dab in the middle of Denver, I longed for with an ache I couldn’t have expected.

So if you are at The Prescott Park Arts Festival this summer and you see a middle aged woman sitting in her beach chair on a quilt with tears quietly dropping from her eyes, know that every tear is a release of more joy than her body can contain. Because here I am; back in Portsmouth NH, floating amidst the notes and strums while the Gundalow tows in the sunset.

The 2023 Prescott Parks Arts Festival Schedule will be released soon. Click here for more.