MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCSC) – The Mount Pleasant Sweetgrass Festival is back for its 21st year to teach traditions and foster culture to Lowcountry attendees.
With Mount Pleasant being the birthplace of the sweetgrass basket, the city’s community affairs and marketing division chief for recreation.
Department Nicole Harvey says nearly 30 basket makers and nearly 30 crafters let others experience its deep-rooted Lowcountry history.
She says the birthplace is even marked with a sweetgrass basket in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
“Most of the basket makers out here today, you know, they learned from their moms, their grandmas, their great grandmas,” Harvey said. “So, it’s just a wonderful thing to see.”
At Saturday’s festival, between 5,000-8,000 people took to Mount Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park to shop at the vendors selling their crafts, clothing and Gullah Geechee food.
On top of photobooths and live music, Harvey says they have always featured caricature artists as well. But they added a new AI sketch bot this year so attendees could experience a quicker, digital version of themselves.
Inside the event, folks could attend cooking demonstrations, listen to historical storytelling and learn how to weave sweetgrass into their own baskets.
Harvey adds that although the slave era was not something to be proud of, this skill is one of the beautiful things to come out of it.
“I think it just means so much to the people carrying on the tradition and the people who get to learn from the tradition that they’re carrying on,” Harvey said.
Harvey says the Mount Pleasant Recreation Department always has events going on, like regularly scheduled farmers’ markets and their Children’s Day Festival coming up in October.
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