Let’s Fete: Celebrating the Culture Cultivators

I suppose it was an ordinary day in Greenville, South Carolina, about 1,095 days ago.  I suppose there was some electricity in the air as two friends and who-knows-who-else had a casual “what if” session, perhaps downed a local craft beer or two, did a little brainstorming and, boom, a digital magazine was born.  Jack DelGado and Jay Spivey had birthed an electronic culture cultivating machine and they named it Fete to celebrate all things Greenville. 

Fete (from French) is defined in various dictionaries as a party, a celebration and even as a festival.  In French, it refers to a holiday or party.  So, kudos to Jack and Jay for finding the appropriate name, but we can only imagine the assortment of mispronunciations, the questioning looks and rolling of eyes that may have occurred when this new e-mag arrived in people’s in-boxes.

“Fete?  What is that?” 

“How do you say that?”

 “Who named this thing?” 

“FAY-ette? “

That was many issues ago; many colorful stories, entertaining videos and video “editorials” have been delivered to our in-boxes since then.  We’ve learned to pronounce fete and we now know what it means. 

Fete Greenville is celebrating 3 years of feting Greenville area activities, events, arts, story-telling and music.  For 3 years, the Fete staff have been celebrating us.  Now it’s time to celebrate them, so let’s join hands and fete the Feters!  Let’s celebrate Greenville’s culture cultivators.

Here’s what our favorite Feters have been celebrating for the past 3 years:

• Amazing artists and a growing arts community:  Thanks for promoting visual arts with 36 different artist works on all of your 36 magazine covers! 
• Theatre, creative performers, poetry and comedy:  Thanks for helping us to discover the performing arts!
• Non-profits:  Thanks for donating close to $300,000 in advertising to support our area’s non-profit organizations and events!
• Fun interactive videos:  Thanks for making advertising and news entertaining!
• Live music:  Thanks for promoting local music venues and for introducing us to cool new music!

Bravo, ladies and gentlemen of Fete!  You done good!  (That’s Southern, not French.)

This is a very short and super-cool video of Fete's 3-year anniversary steel and copper logo made by Ryan Calloway of Creative Iron Works in Greenville, South Carolina.