Ep 106 Gwen Tulip Time Festival

People came from everywhere.

So we didn't have social media, phones at our fingertips, news.

But people did come to see the tulips.

And every year they planted more and more.

Today there's about four and a half million tulips planted in the

city and at the local attractions.

We have about 500,000 visitors, we estimate that come over nine

days to this small community.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Today we are gonna wrap up our series on the city of Holland.

If you haven't done so already, take a trip over to total michigan.com.

Check out the other interviews that we did with Mayor Bocks, Windmill Island Manager

Matt Helmus, and Linda Hart from the Holland Convention and Visitors Bureau.

I can think of no better to end this series than to talk about the

festival that everybody knows about in Holland and is familiar with.

Not only across the state of Michigan, but across the country as well.

If you've ever seen an image of Holland, Michigan, we always see the windmill.

We always see the tulips, and we always see people dancing

wearing those little wooden shoes.

And of course I'm talking about the Tulip Time festival.

So make sure to put that on your calendars.

Now today to guide us through the Tulip Time Festival, we are talking

with Gwen Awerda and the Executive Director of the Tulip Time Festival.

Gwen, how are you?

I'm great.

Thanks for having me today.

Excellent.

And I hope I said your last name right?

You did excellent.

Thank you.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about where you're from and where you.

So I've been in Michigan my entire life.

I came to Hope College in the seventies and never left.

I fell in love with this community.

Um, I worked, uh, at a local automotive manufacturer for 25 years and wanted a

career shift and ended up, running and leading Tulip Time for the last 13 years.

What were you studying at Hope College

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: Business Administration.

Ooh, there you go now

hope.

directions you can go with that degree.

That's why I did that.

Now, Hope College is actually in the city of Holland.

It is .It's in the city and it's, you

know, two blocks from downtown.

And you, you see the students every day and it's a great place to go to college.

You learn a lot.

It's a liberal arts private college and, I enjoyed my time here so much so that I

stayed one summer and fell in love with Lake Michigan and then I, I never left.

Why did you decide to go into the automotive industry?

It wasn't necessarily automotive, it was

the fact that I was looking for, work after I got out of school.

And the automotive industry, uh, at that time was Prince Corporation,

locally in town and small organization, I think it was like 800 people and.

At its peak, there was over 6,000 employees, in the local area.

So it was great to be part of a growing company.

Um, But I learned a lot about the automotive industry that I had not

known because I didn't necessarily study that at, at, Hope college.

Now, When you were talking about being in automotive

for 25 years and then you decided to get involved with a Tulip Festival,

why did you make that decision?

One of the programs that our local

Chamber of Commerce has is called West Coast Leadership.

And it's a nine month program.

You learn a lot about the community, social services,

education, government, and.

Nonprofits was one of our days and we learned a lot about local nonprofits,

and I thought if I could run a nonprofit one day, that would just be great.

Um, So I had a lot of skills that I learned working at Johnson Controls

that really led me into this role.

It was kind of the time when I said, all right, now is a

good time to make this shift.

Uh, Make the jump.

My children were older, in high school and and married.

So it seemed like a good time to do that.

And I didn't realize that Tulip Time was looking for someone.

I was doing some work done in Kalamazoo at the time.

And they were like looking nationally for an executive director and

here I was in their backyard.

The, and I gotta ask the f I gotta ask the question

because this is actually one of the key reasons why people come to Holland.

And whenever they see Holland, it's always the tulips.

We're always thinking of the Tulip Festival.

So when we're, And it's my understanding and in the research we're, we're like

in the top 100 events in the nation.

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: Yes, Tulip Time is one of the

top 100 events in the nation.

We are celebrating our 94th festival this year, which is really amazing to

have an organization be around that long.

We were founded by a, a woman named Lida Rogers.

She was a biology teacher at a local high school.

She was not from this area.

But she recognized there were a lot of kids in her class from of a Dutch

descent, which is how our city was originally formed was from some people

that immigrated here from the Netherlands.

Uh, Albertus van Raalte and his followers, he was a preacher.

And so she thought, well, let's do a project that could beautify the

city, and how do we tie Holland today to Holland in the Netherlands.

And let's plant tulips.

So she kind of pitched her idea to the women's literary club,

the city council at the time.

People came from everywhere.

So we didn't have social media, phones at our fingertips, news.

Uh, But people did come to see the tulips.

And every year they planted more and more.

Today there's about four and a half million tulips planted in the

city and at the local attractions.

So you can see tulips everywhere and they're just beautiful.

I people come from all over.

Every year I get emails and calls from people.

This has been on my bucket list.

My mother wants to come.

We're coming from Florida.

Uh, How accessible is the city cuz she's 80 years old?

And people just love the flowers.

And so our mission is to welcome the world, to celebrate our Dutch

heritage, tulips, and our community today, which is not all Dutch.

Uh,

So we really have three components of things that we celebrate about the

festival uh, when the tulips are blooming.

The city plants most of the tulips.

I sometimes laugh and say, well, we're the Tulip Time Festival, but

we don't buy our plant one tulip.

We put the fun around when the tulips bloom.

So we produce the parades, artisan markets, runs,

entertainment shows at night.

We have historic, um, costumed dancers that dance, a folk

dance called Dutch Dancing.

So lots of fun things around the time when the tulips bloom and like we have about

500,000 visitors, we estimate that come over nine days to this small community.

Um, And so it's just a great time to celebrate spring, the warm weather.

Learn a little bit about Dutch history and the community today,

and it's just a great time.

So we're talking a little bit about the history of the festival.

If you would share with us a little bit about how the festival has evolved

from when it started, let's say 94 years, you said 94 years 94 years

ago versus like where it is today.

Well, back in the early, the thirties and

into the forties, about every couple years they added something new.

So they would add one parade.

Then they would add a musical show.

In the seventies, they added more national entertainment, um, from

Hollywood, which was the first time that they'd really expanded outside of some

local art and culture organizations.

And over the years, we just always are looking for new programming.

What's new and different?

What do people want to come and see?

Um, I've had a passion to kind of work culturally with the Netherlands and

bring artists here from the Netherlands that people wouldn't normally have

exposure to unless you would go there.

And that's actually an interesting question, and I did, I did

explore this, uh, with, with Matt Helmus.

Talk to us a little bit about the relationship that you have

with the Holland in Netherlands.

So the relationship that I and our

organization has is, really through the World Tulip Summit Society.

It's a nonprofit organized out of Canada.

It's been in existence for over 20 years.

Their goal is to bring together people who are doing programming around

the tulip as a sign of friendship.

So we have in this organization, uh, Botanical Gardens.

People that are doing, like we are a festival.

We have growers up in Canada that grow tulips that, you know, also are doing

some programming, uh, around that.

I've met people from Asia and Australia and Europe.

So it's just really amazing.

And there's a summit every two years.

And since Covid, we've not gotten together again.

Um, And that's where I've met, IBO Goldson, who is bringing

for the second year, tulip Ins Immersion Garden into the community.

And so normally your tulips are built and are planted in the ground.

He builds up about three, four feet off the ground and then

puts tulips in pots into this.

So that you can take Instagramable pictures with tulips behind your head.

He also designs these to be immersive, that you can walk through them.

So it's a little bit like the maze that you see, especially the

corn mazes in the, the fall time.

Um And it tells a story.

So tulips were actually a flower that was found in Turkey.

Most people think of tulips coming from the Netherlands.

I didn't either until I got this job and you learn a lot about it.

So the tulips initially were wildflower in Turkey.

A botanist, Clusius.

From the Netherlands was in Turkey.

And he found this flower.

He brought it back to the Netherlands and helped it propagate

into the crop that it is today.

And what Holland is known for, or the Netherlands are known for

is tulips and tulip production from an agricultural standpoint.

All the tulips that the city plants come every year from the Netherlands.

Um, They're fresh bulbs that are planted every year in all the parks.

And so I met IBO at the summit.

And he's like, let's talk about the story.

So the installation has a turbine.

It has the Le and Garden where Clusius was from in the Netherlands.

And then it has the City of Holland logo, which tells a story of how

the tulip ended up here in Holland.

And this year we have a fourth, uh, new installation that will showcase

how Delft became the pottery of the Netherlands and the story

behind Delft and the hand painting.

I mean, everybody thinks Delft in the blue and white, pottery, which it is.

But he will, he'll help tell the story of where that came from and, and what it is.

I did not know that was the name of it.

Delft for the white and blue pottery.

Cuz I, I see that in a lot of the stores around here that are carrying

more of the the tourist fair.

So to say.

I didn't know that was its name.

Okay, well that's really cool.

now with regards to when you come on board to become the, the executive

director of the Tulip Festival.

Why don't you talk to us about a couple of the challenges that, that you had to

face when you were coming into this role?

Well, one challenge coming from a large

manufacturing company to a small nonprofit is you don't have all the support systems.

Your computer doesn't work.

It's up to you to fix.

You can't call IT.

So it was much more a challenge on the business side of things to

run an organization of 10 people.

Um, and you have to be self-sufficient.

So that was one challenge.

The other challenge was learning and communicating and collaborating with

so many partners um, in the community, which is one of the things I love to do.

So it was pretty easy for me.

But yet I had to learn who was who.

Because as I said earlier, the tulips are all planted by the city.

By the Parks department.

So you need to build a relationship with them.

With Windmill Island, um, sponsors.

We have over 100 sponsor corporate sponsors that help sponsor what we do.

And so it's a lot of relationship building.

Not a challenge for me.

But yet something that was different and something that I had to focus on

the first couple of years, to be able to help create the festival as it is today.

We're an independent nonprofit organization.

Many people do think we're part of the city.

We're not.

We just collaborate well with them, uh, um, to plant the tulips

and help do the programming.

But, um, we are an independent organization.

So running it fiscally, and being able to, you know, make a little money every

year so you can reinvest into things the following year is always a challenge.

Many things we do, in terms of programming are free to attend.

So you've gotta find a way to help manage those expenses cuz they

still are expenses, um, for those items like fireworks and parades

do have a budget impact for us.

So it's trying to manage the difference between where you're making your money

on ticketed events and, and providing the free things that the community can enjoy.

And for our audience, we're gonna take a

quick break to thank our sponsors.

When we come back, we're gonna dive into much more what it takes

to make Tulip Time so special.

What are the staples of Tulip Time and what you can expect

at this year's festival.

We'll see you after the break.

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Hello everyone and welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Today we're talking all things Tulip Time, the biggest festival,

not only for the city of Holland, but as Gwen shared one of the top

100 festivals in the United States.

Which is quite a feat.

Continuing to take us on this journey today as Gwen Auwerda, Executive

Director of the Tulip Time Festival.

Gwen, what I'd like to do is explore a little bit more about what the

Tulip Time Festival is and some of the staples of the festival that

makes Tulip Time well, Tulip Time.

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: Yeah, great question.

We have done a number of programming things that have

been around for 20, 30, 40 years.

Um, And so those are what we call our legacy events

because they happen every year.

We do a five 10 K run through tulip lanes and the historic

district, which is beautiful.

it's a great run.

It's in the city, um, an artisan market.

We have over 300 artisans that come and work in that market and sell their wares.

It's really a great opportunity to see some, uh, handmade homemade things.

Those are two of our great events.

We have parades.

So right now we have two parades, a Kinder parade and a Volks parade.

So Kinder Parade means Children's Parade in Dutch.

So all the school children work on different Dutch themed items.

So fishing is big in the Netherlands.

So they work in their art class and they make different things relative to fishing.

Dutch Masters, the, um, painters, um, van Gogh and so forth, are all, they

carry different things around that.

So the children march in the parade, all in Dutch costume and carrying

some of the wears that they've, they've worked on along with

our local bands and some floats.

The Saturday parade, the Volks Parade is called the People's Parade.

And they'll, you'll find bands there.

We probably have 14, 15 bands that March a two and a half mile route,

which is one of the longest parades in the state, um, along with floats

and different walking groups.

And, and that's always a really fun thing.

We have street scrubbing.

Most people will say, what is street scrubbing?

Well, in the Netherlands, they used to manually scrub the streets to get

ready for a festival or a special event.

So we do street scrubbing prior to the Thursday parade.

And we get out the city council members and the dignitaries and

invited guests and the community.

And we scrubbed the streets.

So someone from the mayor's office will have a white glove.

Sweep the street and say it's dirty.

We must clean the streets.

And so the fire hydrants are turned on and people can fill their buckets with

water and brooms, and we walk down the parade route, scrubbing the street,

getting ready for the first parade.

So there's a little ceremonial there thing there, but it's really fun.

Um, People enjoy coming and, and scrubbing the streets.

We have Dutch Dancing, a program that's been around about 55 years.

So we dress our dancers in period clothing from the late 18

hundreds to the early 19 hundreds.

They dance to a folk dance.

It's about 15 minutes long.

This program starts with kids in third grade.

And you can go until you just choose not to dance anymore,

until the alumni program.

We have mothers and daughters that dance together, um, aunts and cousins.

And many people, you know, even into their sixties and

seventies are still dancing today.

Um, And that's a really neat program.

They volunteer their time to learn the dance and participate

in the dance, and there's over 50 performances during the nine days.

Actually, that was something that just popped

into my head, is that if you're, especially if you're talking about

kids dancing, is this something that they primarily learn at home?

Do you have classes around here where people can go and learn that

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: There are classes.

So you would sign up to be part of the, the dancing program.

Parents teach the grade school and middle school kids.

Um, The costuming is very precise.

It's made just for you.

You can't walk into a store and buy one.

And there's some pretty strict guidelines around the costuming

So the whole costume is put together with buttons and hooks and eyes.

It's very authentic.

And part of that authenticity comes with how it's constructed, not so

much what you can see on the outside.

Um, Although we do try to stay very close to patterns.

I learned when I was in the Netherlands that if you're wearing a blue dress as

a woman, that means you're in mourning.

Not black.

Most of us think of black, but blue.

Blue is the mourning color.

So it means there was a death in your family.

Some provinces wear a specific costume.

If you're a fisherman, the men might wear knickers.

Because they're in the water and they're fishing.

Um, So there's a, every province that we have, a costume that's represented

from all, has a story behind it and why it is, the way that it is.

We have, there's no patterns for those.

So many of our directors have have made patterns by looking

at books that are all written in Dutch to see what they look like.

And then we have modified them a bit so we can dance in them as well.

But they're really, uh, a special thing to see, that many people out

dancing and having a great time.

Let's talk a little bit about, cuz you said before

about how you try to interject some new things as festivals goes.

And I'm, And I'm sure that there might even be some one-off

things, like you're able to get somebody to come from one year.

talk to us a little bit about like, let's say for instance, for this

to that they haven't seen before.

So, one of my favorite things, and I saw this group

So just imagine 50 people wearing a Dutch costume, wooden shoes, riding a

bicycle with an instrument, and riding in formation like a marching band.

It's pretty phenomenal and pretty crazy look at.

I mean, the sousaphone players have the big round sousaphone.

And they're, they're playing that and steering their bike at the same time.

The bikes have been adapted for saxophone players, for example.

They steer their bike with their elbow with a little adaption

that comes off the handlebar.

How you do that.

I, I was a musician.

I played flute when I was in school.

And to be able to do that march at the same time was enough of a feat.

But now put yourself in wooden shoes and on a bicycle.

I can't imagine.

But they are coming from the Netherlands.

This year they'll be six performances, between the Friday and Sunday, the

last weekend of the festival, at one of our local football stadiums.

That they're all free to attend due to the generosity of some sponsors and family.

They have fam, the bicycle band people that started it, the barron family.

Um, Just celebrated a hundred years of having the band in the small town

called Aprenda in the Netherlands.

But the children of Yang Bar, Jan Barren, live here in Grand Rapids.

One of them ones out in Linden, Washington.

And they're all coming for a family reunion to watch this band perform because

this is their first time in the US.

They do about 40, 50 performances around Europe every year, and this

is all a volunteer group of people.

Certainly.

And they've been to Japan six times.

But they've never been to the US.

So we're thrilled to have them here and to have the family

be able to see them and watch.

Now, for somebody that's coming to the Tulip Time

Festival, perhaps they've never been here before, maybe they're even hearing

this and thinking to themselves, man, I'd kinda like to go check this out.

What would be some of the, let's say maybe like three things.

That you would recommend if you're coming here, these are three things

that you should see do or experience.

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: One is Windmill Island.

It's a treasure.

It's the very last windmill to leave the Netherlands.

It's a working gristmill.

And that it's been here for over 50 years.

And so that is a great park.

There's plenty of tulips there.

It's fun to see the windmill and how it works and operates.

You can walk through it.

That's a a must see.

Tulips throughout the downtown area and the city parks.

There's two parks that are in walking distance to downtown

by a couple of blocks.

Centennial park and window on the waterfront.

Great ways and places to see the tulips.

And then depending on the day you're here, I would look at what

else would you have time to do.

One thing that we also do is a walking tour.

It's an hour and a half walking tour through downtown, about

a mile and a half total.

All on flatland, so it's wheelchair accessible.

And you can learn about the history of the community.

The community today.

You walk through Hope College.

You walk through the parks.

You get to look at tulips as well along the way.

And that's a really great opportunity to get an overview of our community.

And those are offered all day, every day.

And,

And so you could even get a ticket the day of when you're here if they're not

sold out, which typically does happen.

You can get tickets in advance as well.

So those are some things I would think about doing right away when you're here

to say, okay, let me understand what's, what's around park walk if you can.

Like I said, we're a small community, so sometimes parking and getting

around can be a challenge if you don't know exactly where you're going.

But there's a few one-way streets downtown, but there's,

there's plenty of signage.

You can get your find your way.

And because this is so Dutch, heavily themed and

you've got all the artisans that are coming in and I'm a foodie.

So maybe I'm asking this more for me.

What would be some cuisine that you would recommend that I try?

I would go to Big Lake Brewery.

They have, um, some great Dutch inspired food.

They do stamp pot, um, and a couple of other Dutch food

items during the festival.

They also have a Tulip Time lager beer, which is great.

It's the first time we've done that with them.

The beer is designed or, or made just for Tulip Time.

And it's, the cans are wrapped in our poster of that.

We have an annual poster contest, and so it's a really great souvenir to take home

too if you, if you don't really like beer.

But it's, um, so they've got some great food.

Um, there's also pubs and restaurants up and down eighth Street.

Um, I can, you can just list, they're all on the website as well.

But New Holland Brewery's a great place to go.

Paquito is also lovely, has, um, kinda the Spanish cuisine and the tapas.

And before.

And so now when you're talking about website, if somebody wants to check out

more about Tulip time, uh, some of the activities that I got going on, where

would be the best way for them to connect?

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: Go to tulip time.com.

Look at the shows and events, click on that link and then it will tell you by day

all of the activities that are happening.

What things need tickets.

What things don't.

And that you can plan your day based on when you would be here.

And some of the things I mentioned earlier are open all nine days.

So those are easy opportunities.

Some things are only available on one day.

Uh, One of our evening entertainment shows this year is girl named to Tom.

They were the trio that won the Voice last year.

oh yeah.

That's a show that will be out at one of our local churches, Central Wesleyan.

So there's ticketed events and they're only here on Thursday.

So if you're coming Thursday and are interested in that, that

could be an opportunity for you.

So kind of look and see what day you think you're coming and then

what activities are happening.

Or you can look at it the other way and say, let me see what's happening.

I wanna see Sarah Evans.

She's here on friday.

So then you plan your day around that.

Excellent.

Gwen, thank you so much for taking time outta your busy schedule.

Cause I know a tulip time is just a handful of weeks away.

So thank you so much for talking with us today.

Gwen Auwerda, Tulip Time: Thank you for having me.

And for our audience, you can go to total michigan.com,

click on Gwen's interview and see all the links that she mentioned above.

While you're there, make sure to check out the other interviews that we did

with Holland's Mayor Bach, as well as the Windmill Island manager, Matt

Helmus, and learn more about the other great festivals and activities that

Highland has to offer with the interview with Linda Hart from the Holland CVB.

And don't forget to join our email list while you're there.

See you again next week with another great episode.