By Bernie Petit

The upcoming Dozen Years of Digging Festival commemorating Winterfield Community Garden in East Charlotte is a celebration of science, art, music and literature – all around the theme of sustainability.

And, even though May 14 will be the inaugural event, you can already count it among the best spring festivals in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

The community festival, supported by a $5,000 ASC Cultural Vision Grant, wants “to bring about a city-wide conversation about environmental sustainability,” said Carol Vitez, who helped found Winterfield Community Garden in 2010.

One way to get people talking is through the installation of a “Dirtball” public art project at the garden.

The interactive project, led by art and game design collective Kosmologym artists Walker Tufts and Greg Stewart, combines basketball and carbon offsetting. The concrete beneath the hoop is made of a variety of experimental mixtures. As players dribble the ball and run and jump on the court, they help break apart the concrete and release minerals into the ground that help the soil flourish. The enriched soil beneath the court is better able to pull carbon dioxide from the air.

The Winterfield installation will have a chimney swift tower and the following message penned by a Garinger High School student will be displayed: “Home to unseen and seen creatures/Beauty of all the vegetation/The scent of soil as rain hits the dry ground.”

It will be unveiled as part of the Dozen Years of Digging Festival to entertain not only festivalgoers, but students next door at Winterfield Elementary School, Vitez said.

“‘Dirtball’ uses basketball to engage kids that probably would never listen to a lecture on soil science,” she said.

There will also be a “poetry walk” that features work by Winterfield students and a commemorative journal featuring student poetry. The garden partnered with Charlotte Lit, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and local artists to work with elementary and high school students to write sustainability themed poems. It’s a festival, so you can expect music and food, too.

“Through this festival, we have woven together relationships within the community with Charlotte East, with the neighborhood, with the library, with the high school,” Vitez said. “So, we’re pretty excited about it.”

The Winterfield Community Garden’s Dozen Years of Digging Festival, which celebrates the garden’s 12-year anniversary, takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 14, at the garden (3105 Winterfield Place, Charlotte). Check out more spring festivals happening in Charlotte-Mecklenburg in April and May.