Kristine Kilmartin had recently married Pawtucket Rep. Peter Kilmartin and had only lived in Pawtucket for only a few months. The Smithfield native was driving through Slater Memorial Park in early January 1999 with her new husband when she asked why didn’t the City take more advantage of its green space. Kristine wondered why the City couldn’t do something like the Scituate Arts Festival in the City’s 209-acre park. The Kilmartin’s turned to Mayor James E. Doyle with the idea of creating an arts festival. After a month of meetings, discussion and planning the City created an 18-person committee to plan Convergence Pawtucket ’99.

It had been more than a decade since the Providence Parks Department kicked off its first Convergence Festival in 1989. Meanwhile Providence’s Convergence XII would expand the arts festival statewide by tying together other community festivals held throughout Rhode Island. Pawtucket’s planning committee, co-chaired by the Kilmartin’s, created its own festival in June 1999, tying into Providence Convergence, “with a local flavor.” Most of the committee members were city officials, civic leaders, local business owners and a few local artists. The Blackstone Valley Tourism Council donated staff time for six months to oversee the planning, logistics and implementation of the programming.

Since its inception, Pawtucket’s arts festival has created a citywide showcase of visual and performing arts, interactive workshops, music theatre and dance performances. Where else could you enjoy a wide variety of music from the Rhode Island Philharmonic Pop Orchestra, Duke Robillard Blues Band, Planet Grove, Blackstone Valley Heritage Series, or watch the Big Nazo Puppets, and the Dragon Boat races? Not to mention one-of-a kind art exhibits, attend the Everett Dance Theatre and the Sandra Gamm Feinstein Theatre performances, meet writers and filmmakers at a film festival, and much, much more. And where else could your children learn the art of making glass, raku pottery or carving stone and wood. Or even have the opportunity to create scarecrow or puppets. Only in the City of Pawtucket if you had attended one of our art festivals over the years.