116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
New director fired up for Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival
No handbook for planning celebration during a pandemic, Karol Shepherd says
Diana Nollen
Jun. 25, 2021 7:00 am, Updated: Jun. 25, 2021 7:49 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — Karol Shepherd became the Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival’s events and marketing director just two months before the pandemic shut down the outside world, and ultimately, the 2020 festival. Then she stepped into the executive director position less than two months before the 2021 festival opened.
To say her life has been a whirlwind recently is an understatement, but she’s used to long days, nights and weekends.
Now 42 and living in Marion with her husband and their sons, ages 10 and 13, Shepherd spent six years as the afternoon on-air personality Karol Kelly at radio station Z102.9, followed by four years as the promotions director for all three stations under the KZIA Inc. umbrella: Z102.9 (Top 40), KGYM (sports) and SMART-FM (’80s).
THINGS TO DO: See what Freedom Festival events are happening this weekend
When predecessor Carissa Johnson asked if Shepherd knew anyone from her vast network who might be interested in the nonprofit festival’s marketing position, Shepherd decided she was interested.
“Working in radio is a 365-day job,” she said. “And not that I didn’t love that, but my kids were getting older and I was missing out. I thought, well, Fourth of July is the Fourth of July. It’s not a year-round kind of thing.
“We work year-round, but I’m not working every single weekend, I’m not working every night like I was in radio. (The new job) was more a speed that I was looking for, and it actually was a perfect fit for me — because I’m not 26 anymore. I think I had one weekend off in 2019.”
She started in January 2020 in the marketing position. And when Johnson stepped down as executive director in May 2021 to become Eastern Iowa director for Variety — The Children’s Charity, the Freedom Festival board hired Shepherd to lead the celebration.
She’s been in high gear ever since, with two interns and 21 board members working behind the scenes. Hundreds of volunteers will assist with the events, spanning three weeks and concluding with the July 4 fireworks.
Q: When did the planning start in earnest for this year?
A: 2020 was a very odd year. We’d never had to cancel in the festival’s entirety. Even in 2008 when the flood happened, we were still able to produce fireworks and other programming around Labor Day weekend.
The first year in our history that we had to cancel was devastating. And of course, we’re still in a pandemic. Typically we start planning for the next year’s festival right after the Fourth of July, and at that point, we were still hard-core in a pandemic.
So when we started planning, we started planning for a Plan A, B and C — a best, worst and middle-case scenario. So basically, my scope of work was tripled, right from the start.
We started trying to figure out what we could accomplish if we were still in a pandemic, we still had to social distance, and we still couldn’t hold in-person events.
(We) came up with the military tribute banner program, which got launched this year throughout downtown Cedar Rapids. We have 76 different veterans that we are honoring right now on the light poles, with the help of the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance. That’s something we knew we could do if we were in a pandemic or not, and it’s definitely something we intend to continue for years to come.
(Even with vaccines rolling out in Iowa, plans for other virtual, hybrid and streaming programs were underway, including a walk-through parade.)
And then things continued to open up and open up, so we went back to the city and the county public health and said, is it OK to be where we’re at now? Do we feel like it might make sense to flip and do a traditional parade, and they said yes. So three weeks before the parade, we went from a walk-through to a traditional driving parade (slated for Saturday).
It’s been whiplash. You got your plan and then you also have to just be flexible and nimble to be able to flip it. Granted, I can’t do that with every event — some events I just had to stay the course, and the plan is the plan.
Q: What was your role in the planning and execution of the festival before you stepped into the executive director position?
A: Let’s just add some more change to my plate, right? … A lot of the planning for the festival as it is today, was a partnership between Carissa and myself. We did a lot of sitting and saying, ‘OK, what if’ scenarios. She was a big help in putting together what this festival is. A lot of it was a team effort. …
There’s no handbook when it comes to planning in a pandemic, and so I just hope that I’m going to do it justice. And I hope that the community is just going to be very understanding and opening with wide arms what events are going to look like this year. And then we’ll go from there.
We’ll see what the festival looks like moving forward, if we incorporate some of the things we have this year, like the online silent auction for our Tribute to Heroes fundraiser. That always has been an in-person thing, and this year, we did it online (raising $16,215, exceeding the $15,000 goal). … I think we’ve learned a lot over this last year, and I think it might not be a bad thing.
Q: What is a typical budget for the event, compared with this year?
A: In a normal year when we are producing 20-plus events, we’re looking at between $300,000 and $350,000, and that’s definitely a half this year. …
Our festival is a separate entity from the city of Cedar Rapids — we finance all of our festival event ourselves, so that is through sponsorship dollars, that is through button sales and then donations. We unfortunately are down probably a half of what we typically take in, when it comes to sponsorships in 2021, so that definitely has been a challenge.
We’re at about a dozen events now, with a handful of affiliated events. You can’t produce an event if you don’t have the funds.
A lot of the sponsors were very transparent and said, ‘I’m so sorry, we just cannot make it work this year, but we will be back.’ So I have every confidence that in 2022, our festival is going to get back to full strength — and even bigger and better.
Q: How do you balance the activities to span a wide range of ages and event tastes?
A: That is actually what drew me to the festival, because we do hit different segments of the population, and I have always been very impressed by that. … What we had to cut this year, unfortunately, is some of the kids’ programming. I know everyone loves Imagination Square and everyone loves the face painting and the caricature artist and the balloon twisting. Unfortunately, we’ve had to cut this year, because of budget constraints and because initially when we started it, I didn’t know if families would feel comfortable with somebody getting up in your face doing face painting. I know the community will be disappointed, and I am disappointed we aren’t able to do that this year, but they’ll be back, I promise.
Q: What’s your goal for the audience experience?
A: My goal is to have people have a great time. It’s not going to be packing 15,000 people … for Balloon Glow. It’s not probably going to be a hundred entries in our parade, but it’s going to be an experience that is somewhat back to normal, is my hope.
Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com
Karol Shepherd, seen Tuesday, June 22, before the Balloon Glow at Hawkeye Downs, is the Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival’s new executive director. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)