ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

The Five State Fair is quickly approaching, and part of this year’s festivities will be a community talent show.

The show will be at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 3 in the Seward County Ag Building. Entry forms are due Friday, July 24, and there will be four divisions: 6 and under, 7 to 12 years old, 13 to 18 years old, and 19 and older, and the entry fee is $10 per person. Coordinator KayLonni Bradley said she hopes to have the show tie into other events going on the opening night of the fair.

“Prior to the talent show, we will be having a free ice cream social. Every year we have the 4H fashion revue, and we're going to tie the two together so it brings a bigger spotlight on the 4H kids and helps bring the community out for the talent show,” Bradley said. “The show is open to anyone in the area, the participants don’t have to be from just Liberal. The thought I had behind this was, for Pancake Day, we used to have the talent show, and it went over really well and was something people looked forward to every year. So we thought, why not try bringing talent show back to the community and be able to bring the community members out to another event? And the talents can be anything from to dancing, dramatic readings, comedy, magic tricks, anything somebody would want to show off. This show is giving the opportunity to not only the adults but also youth to show off their talents. It's fully open to what the contestants want to do.”

Bradley added she and other coordinators are excited to be able to offer the show.

“We’re really excited to be giving that opportunity to the community to come out and show their talent off,” Bradley said. “It's not a situation where we're just focusing on just one thing, we're trying to bring out the whole community. The fair schedule has a lot of activities to bring the community out and opportunities for the community to get involved. We had talked about it last year, but we had decided, because of how late of a start all of us had due to all the issues going on with the Fair Board, it just wasn't something we could put together. But this year, we knew we wanted to continue to have the 4-H fashion revue, and so we thought it would be a good option to tie the show with the revue because at the end of the day, the fair's about the 4-Hers – that's why we have the fair, but we bring different things in to make everything bigger. We ultimately thought the talent show would be a way to still spotlight the 4-Hers and bring more people in to see the fashion revue while also showing off the community and basically saying ‘We want to see what else you guys have to offer, and what and to bring you guys in.’”

With this being the first year for the show, Bradley said she hopes for a lot of participation.

“At the end of the day, we would hope the the Ag Building full. This is one of those things we hope to see grow year after year and be able to get to have that type of capacity,” Bradley said. “At the end of the day, what we're wanting is to get people out to the fair and wanting to show it's not just a generic fair. We want to involve everyone possible in all aspects of the community, and this is one of the first ways we thought would be a good way to start the fair off. It'll actually be the official kickoff of the fair, and it’s also something totally community-driven.”