Guests of all ages sported bug-eyed glasses and painted faces at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science’s 17th annual BugFest on Saturday, Sept. 21.
Each year, the museum transforms several blocks of Jones Street into an outdoor, hands-on community classroom. BugFest is the museum’s annual attempt to educate the public about arthropods, or animals with exoskeletons such as insects, arachnids and crustaceans.
According to the museum’s website, its goal is to provide the community with the opportunity to interact with entomologists and get an up-close look at the world of bugs. Kari Wouk, the museum’s senior manager of presentations and partnerships, said the festival has increased in size and substance since its inception in 1996.
“It was very small with just a few people here at the museum cooking bugs and serving them to the public,” Wouk said. “It was just so hugely popular that it’s grown from year to year to year to now where we have 35,000 visitors in one day.”
Wouk said BugFest is one of the biggest events in Raleigh, and it attracts hundreds of scientists, entomologists, or scientists who study
insects, and educators to teach the public about bugs.
“It’s really popular,” Wouk said. “You can get sort of everybody out to BugFest. At the museum here we have a lot of scientists, and a lot of educators and people truly have a fascination with bugs.”
Wouk explained that, with bugs, there’s a sort of sweet spot that attracts visitors with specialized interests.
“I think bugs really hit on something,” Wouk said. “We have all the excitement of people bringing in live bugs and live animals. There’s the quirky side with Café Insecta where people are really fascinated with eating bugs. People get really excited about it. The lines for Café Insecta are just massive. It’s the same every year — people line up to get bug food.”
The museum uses the excitement to draw in attendees of all ages, Wouk said.
“I think one of the things we do with BugFest, we do this for all of our events, is that we cater to every age,” Wouk said. “We have lots of fun things for little kids like arthropod Olympics and the ant, dung beetle and bee races. I think all kids have an age where they’re drawn to bugs and are just really interested in them.”
Wouk said the museum invites entomologists to host panels and Q & A sessions for visitors who are looking for a BugFest experience outside the arts and crafts world.
“We have some entomologists from around the state come,” Wouk said. “These are Ph.D. scientists who are coming to talk to the public about their research and then there’s everything in between. It really is just a big festival. We have a stage with bands and we have vendors. People come and spend all day at BugFest.”
The theme of BugFest this year was scorpions.
“Every year we pick a theme, and that’s really fun for us as planners,” Wouk said. “We get to really come up with cool ideas and plan for cool researchers.”
Wouk said that, after 17 years, the BugFest staff has the way things work down to a science.
“We learn stuff every year — what works and what doesn’t,” Wouk said. “We’ve been doing it for long enough now that we’ve figured out the big stuff. It’s the little things we like to change up. At this point we can’t really get much bigger. We already have to close down two roads, but we’re always looking for more exhibitors — more people to come and be a part of the event.”
This year, for the first time, the museum implemented a new section on its volunteer sign-up sheet calling for those willing to translate for BugFest’s international visitors.
“The response from the sign-up sheet was overwhelming,” Wouk said. “I got so many different languages. There were just so many people willing to translate for visitors. Hopefully that’s something we can move toward in the years to come — the ability to no longer have language be a barrier for education.”
Though a self-proclaimed bird person, Wouk said the public’s obsession with bugs is simple — bugs are sensible.
“See, I’m a bird person,” Wouk said. “It’s really complicated to see them though. You need the binoculars and it’s very difficult for young children to use binoculars. With bugs everything is right there. Even the littlest kid, I have a 2-year-old, can get down and see the bugs. Bugs are so accessible because they’re right there — literally everywhere.”