The FABRIC Arts Festival, founded in 2019 and now in its seventh edition, returns to Fall River October 8–11, showcasing Portuguese contemporary art, music, performances, exhibitions, food, and storytelling, exploring themes of migration, identity, memory, belonging and place and connections across borders.
The festival has established itself as a multidisciplinary platform for contemporary art and cultural dialogue between Portugal and its diaspora in New England.
With particular significance in Fall River, historically one of America’s leading textile-manufacturing centers and long known as the “Spindle City,” it has now grown beyond Fall River, taking place across southeastern New England, including New Bedford and Providence.
Using “fabric” as a metaphor for the social and cultural threads woven together by successive generations of immigrants, who made Fall River and the surrounding South Coast their home, its inclusive program has broadened to engage with the Cape Verdean, Brazilian, Latin American and other immigrant experiences.
Opening events include artistic and musical projects reflecting the experience of saudade, while other programs bring Portuguese, Brazilian and Cape Verdean artists and traditions into conversation. Food also plays an important role, serving not simply as hospitality but as a way of exploring migration, cultural memory and the preservation of traditions.
This year’s Fall River programming highlights “Across Aisles” at Portugalia Marketplace on Friday, October 9, an interactive project by artist Evelyn Rydz that uses recipes and stories to explore the connections among food, migration, family memory and traditions passed between generations. Another Fall River event, “I Am Because We Are” at the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art (FR MoCA), brings together photography, portraiture, community participation and cachupa, the traditional Cape Verdean dish.
The festival is organized under the auspices of Casa dos Açores da Nova Inglaterra (CANI), a nonprofit organization founded in 1982 to promote educational, cultural and social opportunities and to strengthen connections between the Azores and the Azorean immigrant community in New England.
Francisco J. Viveiros, president of Casa dos Açores da Nova Inglaterra, leads the organization, with Michael Benevides, CANI vice president and one of FABRIC’s co-founders, serving as Executive Director of the festival. Benevides, a Portuguese-American businessman and founder of Portugalia Marketplace in Fall River, has played a central role in developing FABRIC as a platform connecting contemporary Portuguese culture with the diaspora and the wider New England community.
The 2026 Artistic Director, Azores-based Jesse James, is the arts curator who is among FABRIC’s original co-founders. Responsible for artistic direction and programming, James shapes the festival’s overall artistic vision and brings together artists and projects from New England, Portugal, the Azores, the Lusophone world, and elsewhere.
Through its combination of contemporary art and community participation, FABRIC has evolved into more than an annual arts festival. It provides a meeting point between the Azores, Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking world and the diverse immigrant communities of southeastern New England, celebrating both the traditions people bring with them and the new cultural identities they create in America.
Many FABRIC Arts Festival activities are free and open to the public, while some events require tickets or advance registration.
PAJ/Staff
Source: Fabric Arts Festival
