The Jefferson County Fairgrounds, hot off the county fair and All-County Picnic, will continue to remain active in August. Next up is the Jubilee Love Festival this weekend.

The Jubilee Love Festival bills itself as “a BIPOC and queer-run” performance arts festival, with musical artist Grace Love serving as its founder and executive director.

Love says she intends for this event to be “an inclusive and diverse community event, celebrating BIPOC and LGBTQ+ creatives, promoting unity and representation.” About 80% of its programming will be allotted to performance art creators, supplemented with a “kids’ zone” for families, as well as family-style dining.

Ever since Love moved to Port Townsend in 2018, she’s sought to make a meaningful mark on the community by fostering even greater degrees of creative and inclusive self-expression.

The original full-fledged iteration of this festival was initially slated for October of 2019, but Love acknowledged that those plans were postponed, as she “embarked on the journey to motherhood.”

The Jubilee Love Festival is expected to make its long-delayed debut on Friday, Aug. 23, and Saturday, Aug. 24, with the gates opening at 3 p.m. for performances running from 4-9 p.m., showcasing 10 local and regional creators of performance art, from the musical to the culinary.

“Each day is dinner and a show,” Love said with a laugh, before turning contemplative as she cited her studies of cultural practices. “So many social rituals, whether they’re birthdays or weddings, involve food. That can be especially significant in rural communities.”

Love hopes to spotlight a broad spectrum of talent, regardless of race or sexual orientation, whose artists can all too often find themselves under-represented in the media. But she also intends to create connections between those artists and the surrounding community through an event for families, “where you know your kids will be safe and taken care of.”

Love said she feels strongly about not simply surviving, but also nourishing both people’s bodies and their spirits, particularly after the pandemic, when she worked with the YMCA to provide meals for families in need.

She said attendees are encouraged to bring their appetites, with a Memphis-style barbecue buffet on the menu for that Friday, followed by a Louisiana-style seafood boil for that Saturday.

Performers will be in both the “A” outdoor stage and the horticulture building stage. Friday’s scheduled outdoor performers include Tara Craig at 4 p.m. and Miche Mora at 5 p.m., followed by Rub at 7 p.m. and Swooth Kiwi at 8 p.m. on the horticulture stage.

Saturday is set to feature True Reckoning at 5 p.m. and Sportstar at 6 p.m. outdoors, followed by Marco Marco at 7 p.m., Altar SHEgo at 8 p.m. and vocalist and performer Grace Love herself headlining the evening at 8:30 p.m. in the horticulture building.

Tickets are limited, and available online at jubileelovefestival.com, but certain tickets are available at discounts, on a pay-what-you-can basis, or even for free on equity passes for those who qualify.