This year marks the 10th Annual Starry Night Music and Arts Festival, presented by Campus House and Greyhouse Coffee & Supply Company.  The festival will take place Friday, September 21st, from 7:00 p.m. till midnight on Northwestern and South Streets in Chauncey Village, West Lafayette.  Nashville indie band Paper Route will headline the event.

I had the pleasure of talking to Sally Diesslin about the upcoming 2012 Starry Night festival.

Let’s start by giving Think Lafayette readers a break-down of what to expect at the event and who benefits from our attendance.

The evening brings live music, regional artists, and hands-on creativity together to advocate the cause of literacy through a local program called Read to Succeed.  The festival is free to the public.

Last year the Starry Night team organized some brilliant community art projects to highlight the joy of reading and writing and promote literacy, like writing postcards, participating in a huge exquisite corpse story, and a community mad-lib project.  What do you have in store this year?

We’ll be writing postcards again, having a collection of random supplies to create one’s own hands-on art, pictures, painting, drawings, a collective typewriter story throughout the night, and more uniquely, a group from the local Writer’s Club coming to perform improv poetry, monologues, writings, etc., with community participation.

Plus we’ll have henna tattoos from the “Henna Dude”, Caricatures drawn by Mike Altman, the interactive photo booth with Brian Powell, and some photographers walking around taking old polaroid pictures.

Attendees line up for pics at the Photobooth in 2011.

An attendee gets a henna design painted on her wrist.

People write postcards to their friends and family to help promote literacy.

Festival goers help put together a giant community ad-lib.

Starry Night Festival promotional image. Click to embiggen.

For more information, go to www.starrynightmusicfestival.com.