Children’s Fairyland was proud to once again participate in this year’s
Autumn Lights Festival at the Gardens at Lake Merritt across the street – we think it was the best ever! We
wanted to share a column written by Tora Rocha, the festival’s overall director and the woman who inspired and continues to
oversee this incredible fundraiser for the Gardens. We also wanted to let folks know about the generous support provided by Niantic, the
San Francisco–based software company best known for developing the augmented-reality mobile games Ingress, Pokémon GO, and the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.
The
Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt is a nonprofit organization set up to
maintain and support the Gardens at Lake Merritt, and the Autumn Lights
Festival helps raise funds for the ongoing support of the Gardens.
– C.J. Hirschfield, executive director, Children’s Fairyland
By Tora Rocha
For the past seven years we’ve hosted the Autumn Lights Festival at the Gardens at
Lake Merritt in Oakland. The purpose is to showcase the amazing array of light
artists in the Bay Area, as well as to raise funds for the ongoing maintenance
and beautification of the Gardens themselves. As the City of Oakland’s park supervisor of the Gardens at Lake Merritt, I had decided I needed to find a way to
raise money and awareness of the Gardens, since it was a little-known secret in
the community. I came up with the idea of a nighttime event to light up the
Gardens with local artists.
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| Tora Rocha at the 2018 Autumn Lights Festival. Photo by John Kirkmire |
In the years that we’ve hosted the Autumn Lights
Festival, we have met more and more amazing community members who see the
Gardens in a new light.
