It’s the kind of brutally hot August day that pushes everyone inside, and the National Aquarium is buzzing.

Jenny Hamilton is perched on a bench in front of the Black Tip Reef underwater viewing area, feeling giddy at the overflowing energy and excitement. It’s almost hard to hear her, as campers and vacationers exit Shark Alley and noisily descend on the 27-foot viewing window that curves four feet around the underwater reef teeming with animals, from angelfish to whiptail rays.

That’s the easy part—attracting kids, school groups, and families to ooh and ahh over the sea creatures. But the more recent challenge for Hamilton, the Director of Community Partnership Strategy, has been to encourage adults to see the Inner Harbor’s iconic structure as theirs, too. To do that, she knew she would need to create a range of projects that would draw a diverse audience reflective of the city the Aquarium was created in.

To say Hamilton was successful oversimplifies the Aquarium’s flourishing Voyages program, which launches its sixth installment next month. The ongoing immersive series for adults encourages a connection between art and science, while simultaneously celebrating all things Baltimore. Artists are asked to explore a question around conservation and then create a one-night-only experience for attendees.

“The pandemic served as a natural inflection point for the Aquarium to reexamine its programs,” says Margot Amelia, the National Aquarium’s executive vice president. “How can we achieve our mission to connect people with nature, to inspire care and compassion of our ocean planet, if we don’t get new audiences like local adults to engage with us? To feel as though the Aquarium is for them?”

One part of that was building on the foundation of an already popular spot (they have an annual attendance of 1.5 million visitors and are the state’s largest tourism attraction) and the other was figuring out who isn’t visiting and why.

“I’ve always been interested in what motivates people’s behavior,” says Hamilton, who majored in psychology at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA. That included how people function within different community organizations.

After graduation, Hamilton took time off before graduate school and followed friends to Baltimore for what she assumed would be a brief stint. “Even though it’s been over 20 years, I still feel like I can’t quite call myself a Baltimorean,” she says. But she soon fell in love with the city. Before she knew it, five years had passed and, after working in hospitality, she realized her strengths lay in managing complex, large-scale operations—all of which led her to land a position on the National Aquarium’s operations team in 2006.

Hamilton, who was born two years before the Aquarium opened in 1981, worked in guest operations—managing front-of-house and coordinating disability access services. Through the latter, she developed a “deep understanding about barriers and accessibility” for the disability community, which then led her to wonder how to reach other marginalized, underserved communities.

Her role at the Aquarium soon morphed into creating community engagement strategies to draw local residents, many living only miles away. And not just adults, but kids who found the Aquarium prohibitively expensive or simply thought it wasn’t a space for them.

The Aquarium also wanted to make sure that conversations around Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) weren’t just abstract ideas. The question they asked, says Hamilton, was: “How can this be [incorporated] into everything we do and be a part of our identity?”

During Hamilton’s tenure, she started the Read to Reef program in partnership with the Enoch Pratt Free Library, offering Baltimore City kids who read five aquatic or conservation-themed books, four free tickets to the Aquarium. (They’ve given out more than 77,000 free tickets since 2015.)

“I like to think of myself as a professional cat herder. Like, how can I facilitate really equitable, large-scale collaborations so that the end result isn’t just one person, one face, one ego,” she says.

She pauses for a second as a crowd of kids shuffles into the exhibit.

“Someone recently said, ‘Oh, I heard you were the brain behind Voyages.’” She bristles at that assumption because there were so many hands that went into its development, from brainstorming to execution. “My least favorite phase is ‘build it and they will come.’ You have to listen. You have to collaborate,” she says.

“VOYAGES GAVE ME A CHANCE TO RE-ENVISION THAT THE AQUARIUM COULD BE A PLACE FOR ME.”

How Voyages came to be is the ultimate lesson in collaboration. More than 25 years ago, the National Aquarium received a generous endowment from Marjorie Lynn Bank to fund a lecture series. The talks were well-received, but the audience had waned, and they weren’t attracting anyone new to the building. Was there a potential to engage an audience in a different way, the Aquarium staff wondered.

The Aquarium leadership—including president and CEO John Racanelli—gave Hamilton and her team permission to explore more creative uses that would still fulfill the intent of the gift. That this was taking place in 2020 and 2021—with the pandemic in the headlines alongside racial reckoning and environmental justice—really helped shape the conversation But since they still weren’t sure what they were creating,

“We kept calling it the ‘Period of the New Thing,’” Hamilton says, laughing.

They gathered staff members with a wide range of expertise (operations, education, communication, science) but also those who had strong relationships with different areas in the city but had “never been given permission at work to say, ‘Can I build something for my people? What if I create a space for them?’” Hamilton explains.

Hamilton and her team also started going to coffee with different community members and leaders, eventually creating what she called her community advisory group.

“Something that makes me love this place so much is that it’s a city where people want to contribute, not just consume,” says Hamilton. “And it’s so collaborative—it has a DIY ethos to it.”

The idea that finally stuck—Voyages—seemed so simple. Produce a night—created by the richly talented artistic community in Baltimore—where adults can wander around, local beer in hand, and feel some wonder in a space that is always packed wall-to-wall with kids.

“As a woman who just turned 40 with no kids, I often view aquariums as family-friendly experiences,” says Liz Miller, a Baltimore County Public School art teacher and owner of Mural Art Tours Baltimore. “I do visit museums, but the Aquarium has always felt like a place that you take children,” she says. “Voyages gave me a chance to re-envision that the Aquarium could be a place for me as well.”

Now Miller has been to almost all the programs. “What Voyages does is connect the arts to science in new and innovative ways,” she says. “It trusts the scholarly mind of the artist to approach the topic of biology and be the connection to a broader audience. These experiences help the audience experience the Aquarium in a brand-new way.”

For each artist, it starts with a trip to the Aquarium to get the creative and intellectual juices flowing. “They get a membership so they can independently come talk to our staff and just sit and watch and think and dream and read all the information,” says Hamilton.

Then they come up with an artist’s statement and begin a deeper dive (so to speak). Hamilton explains that the artists always meet one-on-one with Jack Cover, the general curator—“they get to see the Aquarium through his eyes”—before being matched with other experts, whether locally or throughout the country. All of the work is tied in some way to the Aquarium’s mission.

Voyages: Chapter 1 launched in July 2022, when guests were invited to embark on an audio-focused tour of the Aquarium’s exhibits while listening to an original soundscape composed by local beatboxer, vocal percussionist, and breath artist Shodekeh. The audio was inspired by Shodekeh’s research exploring animal communication. To facilitate his research, Shodekeh was put in touch with the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab. (For each Voyages, Hamilton and Sarah Doccolo, community programs manager, do their own research to pair the artist with just the right sources.)

And while in the past someone from the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab might have been flown in to present a lecture, now they are being used to create a bigger, more meaningful, often interactive project. The artists are interviewing them, asking questions, consolidating all the information, and then using that as inspiration to go out and produce work.

Thanks to the Bank endowment, the artists are able to create a team—for Shodekeh that meant visual artist Erica Hansen and audio engineer Eric Spangler—to install a one-of-a-kind art experience.

“Voyages proves that taking on this level of risk can make magic,” says Ashley Molese, who has been a curator and cultural producer for 15 years and is part of the community advisory group. “I’ve never seen anything like this done before. To me, it’s a love letter more than anything else. Baltimore is full of people who just want to pour more love into the city, and it feels like for two nights a year, Voyages gets as many of us together in one room to do just that.”

Each subsequent chapter has brought about the perfect marriage of visualization and representation. At Voyages: Chapter 2, experimental electronic musicians Jessica Keyes and Patrick McMinn “wanted to study all of the communities across species that need to come together to create something like the Bay,” says Hamilton.

All these things need to work together to be successful, much like creating music. They visited Horn Point Oyster Hatchery on the Eastern Shore—and “so we’re out there with these musicians, and seeing oysters spawn in front of us, and seeing these big vats, and they’re talking to the ecologists and they’re asking questions that the ecologist was like, ‘Those are really good questions,’” Hamilton recalls.

It is a mutual admiration between artist and scientist she sees with almost every collaboration. The scientists quickly realize, “Oh, these people are just as nerdy about that stuff as I am,” says Hamilton. “They’re just coming at it from a different angle, but at the end of the day, we both are just curious about why the world is how it is.”

And often the artist will ask questions that gives the scientist a whole new perspective on their own work. Hamilton has seen a researcher say, “‘I actually might need to go run a seminar on that next year and explore it.’ It’s really beautiful.”

Voyages: Chapter 4 featured drag artist Devon Vaow (also known as Evon Dior Michelle) focusing on adaptation. His conclusion: “Every organism on the planet has to adapt.” And so that night he used drag techniques to illustrate adaptations and to highlight the skill, craft, and beauty of drag.

For Vaow, the experience was much more than a one-off. During the months from inception to execution, the Aquarium staff kept checking in with him to ensure that his “comfort as an LGBTQ+ community member was met,” he says. They even hired inclusion and diversity specialist Jabari Lyles to come in and educate the National Aquarium staff “on the LGBTQ+ community, and inclusive language and verbiage.” It made him feel like they weren’t just checking boxes on a diversity initiative, but really wanted to learn from the relationship.

It was mutual. “Having artist-focused programming like this creates not only a sense of intersectionality within the Baltimore community, but also sends a strong message that art is universal in all of its forms,” says Vaow. “I’m proud to say that Chapter 4 was the fastest-selling chapter they’ve had, which shows how much support our [drag] community has in Baltimore.”

That’s verifiable—and according to a quick search on Google, so is this: “I’m the first drag queen in history to have an aquarium-sanctioned drag show,” Vaow says proudly. “In today’s political climate, furthermore, it solidifies that queer artists have a place in major institutions.”

Amelia, the National Aquarium’s executive vice president, always stations herself just inside the door as Voyages attendees arrive. She’ll do it again come November, when recording artist and performer Dan Deacon will take over.

“These are not our typical daytime guests,” she says. “I smile so hard it hurts.”

For Amelia, the thrill is seeing a new crop of adults all of a sudden feel included in a way they didn’t before—buying a $60 ticket, dressing up, and responding to a program that was a risk for the Aquarium.

“What I love is that never in a million years would I have developed a program like this,” says Amelia, recognizing that the establishment needed a fresh idea. “This ‘new thing’ gives me hope for the continued relevance for the next 43 years.”

Miller agrees. “The National Aquarium is doing something that I haven’t really seen done well by other institutions—it’s allowing the public to engage with an institution in a way that is education cloaked as entertainment. To this day, I’ll never forget that Pattiegonia, a conservationist drag queen, taught me that clownfish are trans.”

For Hamilton, seeing each Voyages chapter come to fruition and find success feels good.

“This is really, really validating,” she says. “Seventeen years of philosophies of how I think cultural organizations should be community-oriented—and it seems to be working.”

At most concerts, music lovers gather around a stage studded with a medley of guitars, amps, electrical wires, and the many moving parts of a drum kit. But not at Embody—the vocal-only showcase founded by local beatboxer Shodekeh and now hosted by WTMD at their Towson studio.

This Thursday, the show returns to the radio station for the third time with an eclectic lineup that will focus on the theme of “generations.” Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Raul Midón will perform alongside up-and-coming neo-soul singer Madison McFerrin (daughter of the legendary vocalist Bobby McFerrin); Nepalese folk icon Prem Raja Mahat (who also owns Mt. Vernon’s House of Nepal and is known as the Bob Dylan of the Himalayas) will team up with India-born, Peabody-trained opera singer Shurmi Dhar; and D.C. jazz singer Akua Allrich will pay tribute to Nina Simone and Miriam Makeba tributes with Shodekeh, who also serves as the evening’s host.

“We all have different abilities that will keep us on our toes,” says Shodekeh. “There’s no saying who will steal the show.”

As in past Embody shows, there will be no instruments or effects involved in the performances beyond that of the human voice. “The voice is the most intimate instrument, because we all have one and it literally comes from inside of us,” says Sam Sessa, Baltimore music coordinator at WTMD and co-host of Embody. “One of the trickiest things about Embody is just explaining it. A lot of people have never heard of a show like this before.”

The closest frame of reference for most music fans is a cappella, but as Shodekeh explains, “It’s really not the same. We’re pulling from traditions outside of just one technique, or genre, or language. We’re using this opportunity to push the boundaries of what the voice can really do . . . It’s really a beautiful moment of exploration.”

Before finding a home at WTMD three years ago, Embody was founded by Shodekeh as an experimental “lab” series in 2010. Over the years, performances have included some of Baltimore’s most talented artists, such as Soul Cannon emcee Eze Jackson, hip-hop powerhouse Joy Postell, Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring, and electronic musician Dan Deacon. This week’s performance kicks off at 8 p.m. and will also be broadcast live on 89.7 FM.

“I remember after the second Embody Lab we did at the Metro Gallery,” says Shodekeh, “I was standing outside, and I saw somebody from the audience say to a friend, ‘Oh my god, you just missed it, Embody just finished, it was amazing.’ And she said, ‘Oh, what was it?’ He said, ‘It was all voice.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, like spoken word [poetry]?’ And he says, ‘No…it was spoken soul.’ That to me encapsulate what we look to cultivate with Embody.”

Visual Art

Maren Hassinger: The Spirit of Things
Maren Hassinger’s four-decade career in art is rooted in sculpture and dance. A selection of her sculptures, made with wire rope, plastic bags, and newspapers, are on exhibit in the Contemporary Wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art in the solo show The Spirit of Things. Some have been reconfigured for this exhibition, which also contains video installations of her performance art and dance. She’s also known for her role at the Maryland Institute College of Art as director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture, which she has served since 1997. July 18-Nov. 25, performance and conversation with the artist at 3 p.m. Sept. 8. BMA, 10 Art Museum Drive.

ISLA: Regarding Paradise
Ironically, the etymology of the word “paradise” goes back to its Greek and Old Iranian roots meaning “walled enclosure.” In this group exhibit at Towson University, curated by Baltimore artist Jackie Milad, contemporary artists working in an array of mediums examine the figurative and literal walls that enclose the pristine beach images of the Caribbean islands, a place that has worked toward political autonomy and environmental justice. Sept.7-Oct. 20. Reception on Sept. 6. Center for the Arts Gallery at Towson University, 8000 York Rd., Towson.

DOS-à-DOS
Baltimore artists L. Nef’fahtiti Partlow-Myrick and Jenny O’Grady met as students in the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts master’s program at the University of Baltimore and will now exhibit the fruits of their labor: a collection of art books, made from a variety of materials both traditional and unorthodox (paper—but also metal and beans, for example). The show’s title references a bookbinding technique that ties together two text blocks with a shared spine-that spine being the MFA program, in this context. Sept. 7-30. Hamilton Gallery, 5502 Harford Road.

Baker Artist Awards 2017 & 2018
Recent Baker Awards awardees—Abraham Burickson (interdisciplinary, 2018), Sara Dittrich (interdisciplinary, 2017), David Marion (visual art, 2017), and Amy Sherald (visual art, 2018)—will show work in an exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Included in the show will be Burickson’s “The Odyssey Works Box,” an archival box filled with books, photographs, and other ephemera, accompanied by a video tour of the history of the arts collective Odyssey Works; Dittrich’s wall sculptures, arranged with hundreds of clay ears; Marion’s multimedia sculptures “Extinction Event” and “Fracking,” which explore violence perpetrated on the natural environment; and two portraits by Sherald. Sept. 12-Oct. 14, with a free opening event with performances on Sept. 13. Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive.

Balancing Act
Joseph Paul Cassar has been working in Baltimore for 13 years as a visual artist and art historian, and is a professor at the University of Maryland University College. He’s shown his work around the world, and this month will exhibit in our city, when Y:ART Gallery in Highlandtown shows his recent work in Balancing Act—drawings in ink and pastel, paper cut-outs, collage, and acrylic on canvas. Sept. 12-Oct. 20, opening reception from 6-9 p.m. Sept. 15, artist talk from 4-6 p.m. Oct. 13. Y:Art Gallery, 3402 Gough St.

Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day
Renowned contemporary artist Mark Bradford represented the U.S. at the 2017 Venice Biennale and will bring that work to Baltimore for the exhibit Tomorrow is Another Day, accompanied by a new site-specific installation, at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Bradford explores themes from his personal life, black identity, Greek mythology, and the universe through mixed-media pieces, paintings, and video. Sept. 23, 2018-March 3, 2019; opening celebration, 1-5 p.m. Sept. 23. Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive.

What Makes Us (Us)
Gina Pierleoni exhibits some 200 paintings and mixed-media portraits of people encountered over a 25-year period in Baltimore and beyond. She’ll lead a coinciding workshop which will include live music to help to dig deeper into questions of place and perception. Aug. 25-Sept. 29; workshop, 6-7:30 p.m. Sept. 15. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

AfriCOBRA: The Evolution of a Movement
This group exhibit at Galerie Myrtis celebrates artists in AfriCOBRA, aka African Commune for Bad Relevant Artists, a coalition that was born from the black arts movement that began in the 1960s and is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The aesthetic of these artists emerged from activism and aims to speak to black people specifically. The show will display paintings, photographs, prints, and 3-D pieces by the group’s earliest and most recent members, including Akili Ron Anderson, Kevin Cole, Adger Cowans, Michael D. Harris, Napoleon Jones-Henderson (founding member), James Phillips, Frank Smith, Nelson Stevens (founding member), and Renee Stout. Coinciding programming will include Tea with Myrtis (as in, founding director of Galerie Myrtis, Myrtis Bedolla) and an art salon with AfriCOBRA members who will talk about their artwork and its impact on the black arts movement. Sept. 15-Oct. 17, with an opening reception from 5-7 p.m. Sept. 15. Galerie Myrtis Fine Art, 2224 N. Charles St.

Music

Taste of Tuva
Celebrated artist Joyce Scott will host this special evening featuring the music, art, and food of Asia. Alash Ensemble, a trio of throat singers from the Central Asian state of Tuva, will bring both their music and culinary specialties, while collaborating with Baltimore musicians Shodekeh and J Pope. The event supports the Asian Arts & Culture Center at Towson University. 6-9 p.m. Sept. 15. TU South Campus Pavilion at Towson University, 8000 York Rd.

Abdu Ali’s Last Show of 2018
Baltimore music artist Abdu Ali will perform their last live show of the year this month at Metro Gallery, joined by Kotic Couture (hip-hop with pop, Baltimore club, and underground art influences), Pamela_ and her sons (the solo music project of Alessandra Hoshor), and W00dy (Philadelphia-based experimental pop artist). 8 p.m. Sept. 5. Metro Gallery, 1700 N. Charles St.

BeatClub at the Lewis
Over the years, Bmore BeatClub has met regularly inside clubs, bars, and initially a record shop to celebrate hip-hop and beats. Novice artists rap alongside experts at these gatherings, and this month’s event will be extra special, as Bmore BeatClub will bring hip-hop, spoken word, and poetry to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. 7 p.m. Sept. 28. Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St.

Theater

Fades and Fellowship Barbershop Stories
Barbershops are places of conversation and camaraderie—and from this idea came the production Barbershop Stories by Baltimore-based theater troupe Fades & Fellowship. A cast of real barbers will perform the stories overheard in the shop—and then give actual haircuts to selected audience members. Sept. 28. The Motor House, 120 W. North Ave.

Literary Arts

CityLit Swing: A Special Celebration Honoring Kwame Alexander
CityLit will honor poet, educator and New York Times bestselling children’s author Kwame Alexander with its Chic Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts during a celebratory evening at The Motor House. Sliding-Scale tickets are available for this CityLit fundraiser, which will include lite fare, libations, jazz, and a reading by Alexander. 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 13. The Motor House, 120 W. North Ave.

Small Press Expo
The annual Small Press Expo celebrates indie cartooning and comic arts, bringing more than 4,000 creatives to Bethesda for readings, workshops, and to meet with one another. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sept. 15 and noon-6 p.m. Sept. 16. Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center, 5701 Marinelli Road, North Bethesda

Miscellanea

Mortified: Share the Shame
Everyday adults share their most mortifying moments via teenage diary entries, poems, love letters, lyrics, and locker notes in this popular show. 6 and 8 p.m. Sept. 22. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Mono Practice
Founding director Ruri Yi is opening a new contemporary art gallery, Mono Practice, in Station North this month, with a focus on abstract and reductive art. The inaugural exhibit, Pointing To The Sun | An Exercise In Abstraction, is curated by Rod Malin and will feature work by Baltimore-based artists David Brown, Zoë Charlton, Ariel Cavalcante Foster, Terence Hannum, Stephen Hendee, Bill Schmidt, and Yi. Sept. 6-Oct. 13, with an opening reception from 6-9 p.m. Sept. 6. Mono Practice, 212 McAllister St.

Visual Art

Profiles of Color III
Fredericksburg, Virginia, artist Ronald Jackson reimagines African-American portraiture in his solo show Profiles of Color III: Fabric, Face, and Form at Galerie Myrtis. The mixed-media pieces are collaged with bold shapes and patterns, reminiscent of Klimt but with a contemporary African accent. June 30 through July 28, with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. June 30 at Gallery Myrtis, 2224 N. Charles St.

Landmarked
Ada Pinkston explores historical landmarks and monuments in Landmarked, a highly participatory show that invites visitors to respond to prompts and, in doing so, become part of the exhibit as it unfolds. A pedestal in the gallery will serve as a space for performance art pieces throughout the duration of the show, including a special night of guest performers on June 16. June 1 to 22 at Cardinal, 1758 Park Ave.

Music

BSO’s New Music Festival
Imagine the elegance of classical music performance against the backdrop of Graffiti Alley and you have the June 22 Chamber Jam with Mind on Fire, Shodekeh, and Ok Miss, part of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s four-day New Music Festival. In its second year, the fest brings contemporary classical music to venues across the city, highlighting living composers. This year, Kevin Puts’ oboe concerto Moonlight, a piece commissioned by the BSO, will premiere at a free show at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. June 20 to 23.

John Williams at Camden Yards
Celebrated American composer (and lifelong baseball fan) John Williams—who has written scores and served as music director for films that include E.T., Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and Star Wars—will be at Camden Yards on June 11 to throw the first pitch. Before the Orioles game, the BSO will perform a selection of his well-known pieces, starting at 6:30 p.m. The game will be followed by the June 13 Evening with John Williams performance at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Theater

Nights on the Fringe
Ballet, theater, puppetry, film, crankies, spoken word, dance, circus arts . . . the list goes on for Nights on the Fringe, a vaudeville-inspired cabaret weekend presented by Charm City Fringe—in case you are itching to see some Fringe-worthy shows before the main festival in November. The evenings will be hosted by Aaron Henkin (WYPR’s Out of the Blocks) and Umar Khan (Gin & Jokes, Super Comedy). 8 p.m. June 8 and 9 at the Baltimore Theatre Project.

Literary Arts

Books in Bloom
The daylong Books in Bloom festival brings a host of writers across all literary genres to Columbia for readings, discussions, children’s activities, and a pop-up bookstore. The lineup includes Amanda Lucidon, Edwidge Danticat, Elliot Ackerman, Ian Mackenzie, Jane Delury, Jeannie Valasco, Katia D. Ulysse, Nathan Bomey, Sujata Massey, Vikram Sunderam, and others. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 10 at downtown Columbia Lakefront, 10221 Wincopin Circle, Columbia.

Miscellanea

CreateScape
Creative Labs’ CreateScape event celebrates the DIY arts culture of Baltimore through a free, three-day open house at the group’s headquarters. With a focus on health, creativity, sustainability and collaboration, the fest, hosted by Creative Labs, will cross yoga and dance battles with live music and street art. An array of artisan vendors will give this event a festival feel. June 8 to 10 at Creative Labs, 1786b Union Ave.

Healthy Baltimore: A Festival of Wellness
The free Healthy Baltimore festival at Port Covington will bring an array of music, food, and health and fitness vendors aimed to get you on track—plus the inspiration to move your soul and your body with a performance by Talib Kweli. Pre-registration is required. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 16 at The Field in Port Covington, 200 E. Cromwell St.