Sweet Pea A Festival of the Arts. Born out of a community's desire to celebrate the arts. In existence today due to the community's desire to continue to celebrate the arts and all that they add to our lives.

Founders. The Sweet Pea Festival had its humble beginnings in 1978. It was established to be a community event that celebrates, cultivates and promotes the arts in Bozeman”. The founders of this event wrote on April 13, 1977; “a working committee took shape from an amorphous group of Bozemanites dedicating themselves to staging a three day “celebration of creativity” among the community ….”.

Volunteer run. Sweet Pea has always been run and organized by volunteers. It has grown from a group of 17 organizers to 35 committees, 50 year-round Board members and up to 2,000 volunteers by the time all is accomplished for the current year.

Giving back to the community. Sweet Pea is the definition of community in its purest form. The original founders desired that the festival support and encourage cultural activities beyond the annual celebration. To this end, the Sweet Pea Festival has a proud tradition of returning any funds gathered beyond expenses back to the community. Any profits realized above and beyond the year's expenses are given back to the community, each year, in the form of grants for arts, arts education and special projects, such as taking care of the beautiful park that hosts the Festival.

Funding. Sweet Pea is funded primarily by the sale of the admissions. The first organizers purchased two button making machines and five committee members created 1,000 buttons each. In 2004 over 19,000 buttons were sold.

You can volunteer. Sweet Pea has been an important part of the arts and the artistic and cultural life of Bozeman for nearly 30 years. It is the hope of all of the dedicated volunteers, past and present that Sweet Pea will continue on in the exciting and important tradition it has established and continue to remain the most cherished celebration that it is.

Anyone can be a volunteer! Visit our volunteer page to establish yourself, your organization or your business as one of those who kept the Sweet Pea tradition alive!

	30 Years of Posters
(click on image for enlarged view)

1978
	1978 Sweet Pea Committee	1979 George Mattson	1980 Oscar Fernandez	1981 Oscar Fernandez	1982 Peg Dirckx
1983 Sandra Rumney	1984 Daphne Gillam	1985 Paula Eggen	1986 Jesse Wilbur Commemorative Design		1987 Stephanie Newman
1988 Brian Murphy	1989 Peg Dirckx		1990 Frank Kujawa	1991 Mary Fry	1992 Krista Nelson
1993 Melanie Green	1994 Dan Sheehan	1995 Jodi L. Hougard	1996 Carol Hagan	1997 Deb Parsons Menke	1998 Teresa Kelly-Tagas
1999 Nancy Townsend Cawdrey	2000 Karen Tanner		2001 Craig Hyslop	2002 Katrina Hamilton	2003 Marie Nagorski-Jones
					2007
2004 Lisa I. Parish	2005 Karen Tanner	2006 Julie Hale	2007 Doug Zwang

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Visit the GROWING SWEET PEAS page!

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