The phrase “It Takes a Village’ has been used so often that sometimes we simply dismiss it. But that phrase couldn’t be more fitting in describing the 2010 Tenth Annual Magical Montgomery Festival that drew a crowd of over 8,000 people on Saturday, October 9th to the beautiful Silver Spring Civic Building and Veterans Plaza.

Magical Montgomery is not a profit making program of AHCMC, but rather an opportunity for artists and organizations to market themselves to the public at large. Usually, the cost of the festival is underwritten by a sponsor. However, this year we had no sponsor and consequently, we did consider cancelling this marketing opportunity. But the many emails and calls we received from our constituents led us to attempt a new business model instead. While we had to add a modest increase for booth fees, that increase did nothing more than pay the fixed costs of producing this event, allowing constituents to connect with 8,000 participants at less than 1.7 cents per person.
From the yeoman’s work done by Elizabeth Gallauresi, our top notch Event Producer, to the cooperation of my colleagues Reemberto Rodriguez and Gwen Haney at the Silver Spring Regional Center, to the wonderful response of our arts and humanities organizations and individual artists, to the attention paid to the event by County Executive Ike Leggett and State Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, to my incredible staff – Megan, Shellie, Michelle and Karen — everyone’s efforts converged to present the arts and humanities in all its splendor on what surely was one of the most glorious days of the year.
Thanks for believing in us and for giving us the opportunity to present our community to the public in such a magnificent setting! From start to finish, the event was truly Magical.