Event Highlight - River of Light
The River of Light is a celebration of light in winter. Presented by the Public Arts & Culture Committee and the Mosesian Center for the Arts in partnership with the Watertown Cultural Council, the lantern-making workshops and wintertime parade build community and bring light, joy, and festivities during the darkest season of the year. Listen to this conversation with Roberta Miller, Chair of the Watertown Public Arts and Culture Committee to learn more!
Released January 9th, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Saturday, January 17th, 4-6pm at the Mosesian Center for the Arts
Free to the public
More information and details here
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Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at watertownbusinesscoalition.com.
Thanks to promotional partner Watertown News, a Watertown-focused online newspaper. Check them out at watertownmanews.com.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a short event highlight episode for the River of Light, which is coming up on Saturday, January 17th from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. The River of Light is a celebration of light in winter presented by the Public Arts and Culture Committee and the Mosesian Center for the Arts, in partnership with the Watertown Cultural Council, with additional partnership with the Chinese American Association, and helped made possible by the Watertown Community Foundation, and the event sponsor is the Watertown Savings Bank. So lots of groups and organizations in the city involved with this. And for this little episode, I sat down with Roberta Miller, who's the chair of the Watertown Public Arts and Culture Committee, about how this idea for this event came up last year, how the first year went, and what to expect this year. Hi there. I'm sitting down with Roberta Miller, who is the chair of the Watertown Public Arts and Culture Committee, who is hosting, again for the second year, River of Light over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. So we just wanted to talk a little bit about that, tell you what it's about, and what's going to be happening this year. So first of all, why don't you tell us, Roberta, what is the River of Light?
Roberta: 1:23
Well, the River of Light is a community-wide experience of lantern making, craft, and creativity, which culminates in a parade on January 17th, between four and six at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. The idea for this started with a conversation I had with an artist many years ago, Cat Bennett, who had a friend who was helping create these experiences of these large lantern making kind of citywide craft projects almost. And I looked at those when Cat told me about them, and they just looked fabulous. Cities in Vermont had been creating these community-wide experiences that school children participated in and adults participated in, and the local bands participated in, and I thought, hmm, this looks like a really fun thing. And the last two years, in my position as chair of the Watertown Public Arts and Culture, we had an opportunity and we had the funding to actually move ahead with this project. So we invited Gowri Savoor to come to Watertown to train all of us in how to make both small and large lanterns. She came with her crew last year and did a training for some of the art teachers in the public schools, some of the community members, some of the other teachers that were teaching at the Mosesian Center. And last year we ran the program for the first time, having no idea how many people would show up. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain and really cold and really miserable. And we thought, oh my God, 25 people are going to show up for this event. This is really too bad. But we changed the format, and rather than having an outside parade, we had an inside parade and mounted our very large lanterns on the stage, in the main stage, and still enjoyed all of the things that we had planned, which were hot cocoa and lantern making and performances by the light dancers and the high school band.
Roberta: 3:55
And miraculously, 500 people showed up. Personally, I was stunned. But it spoke to a kind of excitement about January activities that really do bring some joy and light to a very dark time of the year. So, needless to say, we are moving on and gonna do it again this year on January 17th. This year we have two performances in the main stage. At four o'clock, we will be having Sam Newcomer do a family-friendly concert. He's a wonderful singer-songwriter. And then will be the parade. A very short parade around the Mosesian Center building. And then the final piece will be an Indian dance performance at 530. It's a great community experience. We will be serving hot cocoa and cookies and the library bookmobile will be there to share some of their stories about bringing light to the world and how many, many, many of the religious traditions of the world all celebrate that kind of experience. It's gonna be fun. Bring your kids, they can make lanterns, they don't have to have made them beforehand. So we are hoping to have better weather than we had last year. But even if we don't, we're still going to be celebrating light at a very dark time of the year, which seems to be something that everybody needs.
Matt: 5:32
Yeah. What were some of your favorite moments from last year’s event?
Roberta: 5:38
We were trying to figure out what the parade route would be, last year, and there was a little girl who was holding her lantern, and we decided we were going to just go through the second floor lobby and snake into the main stage. And I turned to this little girl, and she must have been five, and I said, Would you like to lead the parade? And she perked up and she said, Yes, I would like to lead the parade. And so off we went. And that was how the parade was led. It was really fun.
Matt: 6:21
Yeah, it was great. I am on the Public Arts and Culture Committee, so I was part of volunteering that night too. And so then after the parade, everyone sat in the theater to watch some of the performers. So you had the whole, you know, 500 people sitting in the seats, all holding their lanterns, and it was cool to see some of the kids with their basic little bag ones, and then some of the ones that were much more intricate, all mixed together. Yeah, do you want to talk about some of like the more large-scale ones that were done? Because, you know, someone like Fritz and others made some very, or you want to talk about making your own, your beloved Harriet.
Roberta: 6:56
Well, I do want to mention Fritz, and I'll introduce Harriet. When Gowri came last year to train us all, one of the students, Fritz Smith, really decided that lanterns was his thing. And he has made the most incredible lanterns and continues to make them and train other people and help other people to make them. One of the wonderful trainings that we do do in the community is we do do a two-day training to make a large-scale lantern. So artists come together to basically figure out how to make a very large lantern shaped like something. And Fritz has been incredible about both training others this year and taking on that role as master teacher and also just making a tremendous number of them himself. And they're gorgeous. They're just gorgeous. So just so I could encourage those of you who would like to do this maybe next year, my husband and I last year went to the two-day large-scale lantern training. Neither of us are artists of, we would not claim ourselves to be artists. But we came up with this idea of Harriet, the great blue heron, who is six feet long and probably has a 12-foot wingspan. We have to take off her wings in order to get her in and out of the building. It was just so much fun. At that point, Gowri was working with us to help us make these very large-scale lanterns. And then when we had to move inside for last year's parade, we basically hung Harriet on the main stage, lit her and hung her, along with several of the other large-scale lanterns that were made by other students. It was just a lot of fun. So it was a big craft project, and we had excellent guidance. And now Fritz has become our master lantern maker and is willing to help anybody make lanterns. And it's just delightful.
Matt: 9:09
Nice. Any last thoughts on who this event is for or anything else before we wrap up and tell people where to go check it out?
Roberta: 9:16
This event is really for families and for anyone who would like to come and celebrate with us. Kids love it, but anybody loves it. A lot of single people came too and really enjoyed themselves. So it's a way to join with the community, have some hot cocoa, make a lantern, see a couple of fun performances. Our light dancers will be back with us this year, which are, they are just fun. And then we do have a new band that is coming to perform if the weather isn't too cold. So it's the Good Trouble Brass Band, and they're fabulous. They're a honk band, they perform around, and several of the people who play in the band are from Watertown. So I think it's going to be really great.
Matt: 10:10
Well, I’m sure year two is going to be great. I'll put links in the show notes, but for anyone who likes hearing where to go check this out, where should people go to find out all information River of Light?
Roberta: 10:21
So go to the Mosesian Center for the Arts website. If there is any weather-related changes to the schedule, that will be on that website. We did find out last year that it is possible to do it inside. So we do not have a rain date. So even if the weather is bad, please come and join with us and we'll have a lot of fun.
Matt: 10:45
Yeah. And there's a nice parking garage right next door. So if it is a cold rainy day, you won't have to be outside for very long. Great. Well, thanks for talking about River of Light and looking forward to it.
Roberta: 10:57
Me too.
Matt: 10:59
So that's it for my conversation with Roberta. Again, you can head on over to MosesianArts.org to find all the information on the River of Light event on Saturday, January 17th from 4 to 6 p.m. Couple personal notes on the performers. Sam Newcomer. I was also involved with organizing Porch Fest the first two years, and I saw part of his performances. He was great. He engaged both the kids and the adults alike. And the Indian dance performer, Swati Biswas, who has been on this podcast, she was a former member of the Watertown Public Arts and Culture Committee. She's been an artist in residence at the Mount Auburn Cemetery, so I'm sure that will be a great performance as well. And again, there'll be lots of other activities going on too during the parade, before and after, so go check it out. I'll be volunteering. Come say hi if you're there. And also, if you are listening to this before the event and you would like to help volunteer, we could still use a few more volunteers. So send me an email at Matt at LittleLocalConversations.com and I'll get you in contact with Roberta.
Matt: 12:00
And if you'd like to hear more episodes of the podcast, head on over to LittleLocal Conversations.com to find all the episodes there, including I just did one with Roberta, kind of going over her whole personal journey and contributions to the Watertown community. Great conversation, go check that one out. Alright and I want to give a few shout outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor Arsenal Financial. They’re a financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice, who's a very committed community member, and his business helps busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org and mass cultural council.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners, first one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, which is a nonprofit organization here in Watertown and their motto is community is our business. Find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
