Free Outdoor Yoga/Music/Arts Festival Coming to Drexel Park in May

The view of the Philadelphia skyline from Drexel Park | Photo by J. Fusco for Visit Philadelphia™

My college senior project consisted of me writing a paper about my career goals. Lindsay McDowell, a student at Drexel University, is going a bit bigger with hers: McDowell, a senior in Drexel’s Entertainment and Arts Management program, is putting on a giant outdoor yoga festival, complete with live music, art installations, food vendors, art vendors, and more, at Drexel Park on Sunday, May 1st. That is her senior project.

Who else feels like an underachiever?

Called Kula United Yoga & Arts Festival, the shindig, open to the public, will consist of three yoga classes taught by instructors Jake Panasevich, Teagan Scheitzer and Stephanie Berliner, all of whom teach at Center City’s Maha Yoga. As McDowell tells us, each of the classes will be an hour long, and most if not all of them will be taught to live music. She and her partner in the project, Tyler School of Arts graduate Courtney Kalinowski, are also hoping to add a yoga class for kids to the mix.

Along with all the yoga happening, there will also be live music going throughout the day; vendors slinging art, jewelry and the like; food vendors — complete with vegan and gluten-free options; and artists doing live performances. The eclectic mix of activities is what earns the event its name: As McDowell explains, “Kula means community, but more specifically the coming together of diverse communities to strengthen everyone.” Throughout the course of the festival, which will run from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., they’re hoping to see somewhere around 500 attendees.

So, how are McDowell and Kalinowski managing to pull this off, you ask? Well, as McDowell explains, being a student at Drexel made securing the space and getting funding, which she raised through different student organizations, a whole lot easier than it might have been were she not a student. And Kalinowski happens to have completed her teacher training at Maha, so she had the connections to get instructors from the studio on board.

McDowell and Kalinowski will be rolling out the lineup of artists, musicians, vendors and the like over the next few weeks, and they’ll be posting the Ticketleap page to sign up for the yoga classes by the end of this week; the classes will be free, but they’re encouraging sign-ups to get an idea of how many attendees they can expect. To stay in the loop, you can keep up with the Kula United Yoga & Arts Festival on Facebook and Instagram.

The only bummer is you have to choose between this and Broad Street, which falls on the same day. But here’s to having something to tide yogis over until Wanderlust 108 makes its way here in the fall!

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