Eastern Illinois University’s free-admittance 2025 CLAS Spring Fest will be held from Thursday to Saturday in and around Doudna Fine Arts Center with vendors, performances and artists all being showcased.  

CLAS Spring Fest is a continuation of what used to be called A Festival of the Arts, which ran for over 30 years before being shut down due to COVID-19 and the quarantine, according to Doudna Director of Programming, Publicity and Promotion Dennis Malak.  

“We thought about rebranding it and re-marketing it and kind of breathing some new life into it,” Malak said.  

As a result of this rebranding, the festival was split in half starting in 2022 with Spring Fest and the Holiday Fest occurring later that year.  

Upon the festival’s return, Malak said not many were in attendance due to the uncertainty still surrounding the quarantine’s end.  

“Not everybody was ready to come out, so it was small,” Malak said. “It’s starting to grow back, and people are remembering it again and coming back for it again, so we’re excited about that.”  

Spring Fest is the larger of the two festivals featuring seven or eight food trucks, multiple artists and vendors throughout the latter half of the week, according to Malak.  

Malak said a big stage with lighting and an audio rig for presenters and performers to utilize will also be present.  

One performer is Ryan Noir, a local artist who will be performing two sets across the festival. The first will be an acoustic solo set on Thursday at 5 p.m., and the second will be a set with his band Ryan Noir and The Cosmos on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.  

Both sets will perform folk/rock music in an effort to replicate the sound of their heroes like Bob Dylan, according to Noir.  

“There’s a lot of storytelling,” he said.  

Another group performing this year is Insomniac’s Dream, a music collective that performs original music, on Friday at 3 p.m. Not to be confused with The Insomniacs who are a two-person electronic music group that play right before them at 1 p.m.  

This year’s Spring Fest also will feature the Greek Week Airband Competition for the first time, which will see fraternity and sorority pairs performing a choreographed dance to multiple songs.  

“That should be fun because I think that it’s bringing more students to this and kind of broadening it to the wider campus,” Malak said. “Because of where it’s held, people might have thought it’s a Doudna event, but it’s really a community, public, everybody event.”  

Compared to previous festivals, Malak said the layout this year will feel completely different with the full stage and audio.   

“It’s not going to be the small setup that you’re used to,” he said. “It’s going to have a much bigger and traditional feel.”  

The Hayes Ave. coming off Ninth Street in Charleston is set to be shut down starting Wednesday in order for the stage to be delivered and the setup for the vendors to begin, according to Malak.  

The full schedule for the 2025 CLAS Spring Fest can be found here. 

Luke Brewer can be reached at 581-2812 or at lsbrewer@eiu.edu.