The news of the Frozen Dead Guy Days (FDGD) festival moving to Estes Park has affected the residents, workers, business owners, and town officials of Nederland. The feedback from the public has ranged from placing blame on the local government, deriding what FDGD has become, and even hopes that the Estes Park festival would fail. With so much negativity surrounding the conversation of festivals in Nederland, a group of town staff and community leaders have organized to produce a one-of-a-kind winter event, a project currently titled “Nederdays.”

“Not everyone’s going to love the name,” Stephanie Andelman, event coordinator of past FDGD festivals and of the Nederland Jazz & Wine Festival, said in an interview with The Mountain-Ear. “I think it’s a good name and it came from ‘we need better days in Nederland.’ Better days for events, for community, collaboration, and cohesion.”

Nederdays is a Town-owned event designed to engage local businesses across all four corners of Nederland to participate by coordinating smaller in-house events to help draw in festival goers. In addition to the goal of reenergizing the local economy during the slower month of March, Nederdays is also aimed to be a community focused event, without any outside vendors, and with an advertising range limited to just Nederland’s immediate Peak to Peak neighbors.

“Ideally what people are going to do is go to a website, and we’ll have some printed maps with activities, and then each place is going to have their things to do,” Andelman explained. “My goal is to spread it out from as far as HubNed, to TEENS, Inc, to Peak to Peak, to Kathmandu. We’ll have a couple of pop-up tents where you can have information, but you can also go into any business and start there.”

“This is a local grassroots event,” Andelman said in relation to how Nederdays may grow in the future. “This is a community event, a family event, for only a day and a half, with no music tents. We’re inventing something with mass public participation from the ground up so next year we can do it bigger and better with more money, more activities, and more music.”

Among the conversations of including local businesses and stimulating the economy, there’s also the hope that Nederdays may take away some of the sting of losing FDGD while also diminishing the belief that the Town of Nederland is opposed to festivals and special events.

“Based on my event experience working with the town and working in downtown Nederland many people came to me after they heard about FDGD and I was thinking the same things…from both the aspect of the transfer of FDGD to what does town need to do to reinvent and repurpose its energy and be shown in a positive light,” Andelman said about how the idea of Nederdays was born from a need to spread positivity.

“I think it’s imperative for us as the government to be able to say hey, this is something people want, we should push to see this through,’” Peter Cacek, the Town of Nederland’s Administrative Support Manager, told The Mountain-Ear.

Cacek is involved with Nederdays as, not only a member of town staff, but as a liaison for the Town of Nederland to local businesses, ensuring that the festival remains as something “focused inward” as opposed to something “that takes over the town.” From Cacek’s work for the Town’s social media, he understands the importance of providing the community a positive affirmation that the local government is working to be better.

“With Nederdays there’s going to be a lot more boots on the ground on our side but I’m also hoping to see that encourage people to start up their own events and get involved,” Cacek said.

The concept of Nederdays is a family friendly festival taking place over March 24 and 25, 2023, that will feature two to three main events, as well as a series of smaller events being hosted all over town. The most striking and immediately intriguing idea for a main event is that of the Sledding Course.

Organizers hope to construct a sledding course on East 1st Street where teams will compete against each other for the fastest time. The plan includes the starting ramp of the sledding course being tall enough to be visible from other points in town, drawing traveler’s attention as they drive through Nederland.

“We’re going to make that sled course happen,” Andelman began to break down the logistics of the event. “There will be, let’s say, ten teams, with each team being two to three people. And one teammate will push their other teammate down the ramp.”

“I haven’t decided the age or size of the contestants but they’ll obviously have to wear a helmet, and there will be hay bales they have to sled through on a simple course. And the teams can dress up and have a theme, of course, and then the course can be open to everyone to go sledding all day.”

“And hopefully when the Eldora traffic drives by they’ll see a sledding event and get excited to stop and all of a sudden we can have a few hundred extra people who have never hung out in Nederland,” Andelman said.

Other ideas for main events include a community event to take place as the opening ceremony, either in the form of a square dance in the street or a silent disco. Ice carving will also be a featured event, with the concept providing ice carvers the opportunity to create sculptures which will be stationed around town and featured on an event map in a way to encourage foot traffic through all points in town. Visitors will also be able to vote for their favorite sculpture.

Andelman and Cacek confirmed that all Nederdays events, which are still being conceived and planned, are being created to be “community focused.” Such activities like a Lighting Contest and a Wood Splitting Contest, as well as events for first-time visitors to Nederland such as a digital scavenger hunt, are to provide those visitors a view into Ned life. There are also events planned to show off Nederland’s style, be it weird, trendy, or fitness focused, such as a Fashion Show and a 5k Trail Run hosted by NedGravel.

One of the complaints surrounding the 2022 FDGD involved the inclusion of food trucks and vendors from outside of Nederland. The organizers of Nederdays are working to avoid such oversight by conferring over the next few weeks with local business owners on how they wish to participate and be involved. Business owners are being asked to get creative and to coordinate with the festival organizers in order to come up with alluring special events that highlight the unique wonders that Nederland has to offer.

“The thing I like about Nederdays is that it’s going to be dictated by the businesses,” Claudia Schauffler, property manager for Caribou Village Shopping Center and owner of The Shop, told The Mountain-Ear. “I want to do something here I can, or if a group of us want to get together and do something we can; and I think that’s the way it’s going to be ongoing.”

Schauffler was already polling the shopping center’s businesses about throwing a festival of their own when Andelman reached out to her with the concept for Nederdays.

“My suggestion to her was to contact all the business owners and make sure they were interested in this. You want them to have all the information they need so they come to the meetings to ask questions, not to get educated. So she said ‘great idea, will you do it,’ and of course I said yes because I think it’s important.” Schauffler said.

“I included as many businesses as I could get emails or phone numbers to and overall the response was overwhelmingly positive. I heard back from lots of business owners; everybody totally supported it and was anxious to get on board with it.”

“All the local businesses will be contacted for them to come up with their own ideas, be on the map, and bring the people to them,” Andelman detailed the next steps for Nederland business owners looking to be involved, which is to start conceptualizing their own Nederdays events. “I can come to them or they can come to me and they’ll be included.”

“I don’t know if I can do it this year but I would love to sponsor the fashion show and I would love to do it with other businesses that sell clothes,” Schauffler spoke excitedly about the concept of collaborating with the other Nederland stores that sell clothing, such as the Mountain Man Outdoor Store and Wings of Lace.

On Wednesday, January 11, 2023, the NDDA heard a proposal from Andelman and the organizers of Nederdays for $8,500 in grant funding for the festival. The NDDA usually offers roughly $1000 in special event funding to accepted applicants; their budget for special event funding in 2023 is $10,000.

Andelman expressed to the NDDA that if the full amount of $8,500 in funding was not granted, the festival would not be able to happen this year. The provided cost breakdown of Nederdays shows exactly where the $8,500 would be spent, including $3,000 for Event Coordination and Marketing and Public Relations, $1,000 for the design and creation of the sledding course, and $1,350 for the ice blocks required for the ice carving event.

After a discussion concerning the matter of ownership of the festival, during which it was stated that the Town of Nederland will own the festival, the NDDA approved the funding request, opting to utilize funds from the 2023 traffic control budget of $30,000.

“Everyone was unanimous towards it and that was very surprising for me,” Cacek recalled about the January 11 NDDA meeting. “I think a lot of really good points were brought up and it showed that we had put some thought into it; as far as things like how are we going to handle security, how are we going to avoid taking business away from local stores and restaurants.”

With the event being owned by the Town of Nederland, it alleviates a lot of the complex issues that arise from collaborating with third-party owners and organizers. A lot of the intricate logistics of running a festival are also relieved by the Town’s staff, Public Works department, and Parks department being on hand to facilitate the operations.

“So for the zero waste piece of it I’d like our sustainability board to help come up with the volunteers, the staffing plan, and the plan for where the containers are going to be held,” Nicki Dunn, Director of the Nederland Parks Department, detailed to the The Mountain-Ear just how her department and the Town of Nederland plan on executing such an event.

“For parking, if we’re only expecting 500 to 1,000 people and we’re catering to locals, the locals are going to know where to park and how to park, so I don’t really feel as crunched as if it was a 5,000 or 10,000 person event where I would really have to staff every parking lot,” Dunn said before noting that she is one of 17 people in December 2022 who were certified by CDOT to instruct traffic flaggers. Dunn mentioned that with the projected number of attendants for Nederdays she can use crossing guards mainly and only train festival volunteers as flaggers if absolutely necessary.

One of the most important aspects of the Parks department helping run the operations for Nederdays, for Dunn especially, is that a portion of proceeds from Nederdays will go towards scholarships for Nederland youth.

“I had a request from Nederland Middle Senior High School to help fund a few kids to go to High Trails camp in Florissant.” Dunn described High Trails Outdoor Education Center as a place where kids can learn about survival skills and Colorado history.

It costs $400 per student to attend the High Trails Outdoor Education Center, with there being 10 students in Nederland who need help with that funding; Dunn and the Parks Department hopes to make the trip a reality for a few of those students.

“If a kid wants to play hockey, or a kid wants to play soccer, I want to make it happen,” Dunn said. “Every kid plays, no one should be turned away for financial reasons. I have a passion for making sure that every kid can be involved if they want to be involved.”

In addition to a portion of the festival revenue being able to go towards helping locals in need, Dunn is looking forward to Nederdays being an event truly for the community.

“We’re trying to get Nederland to enjoy Nederland again!”

“There could be a winter Nederdays, a spring Nederdays, and any kind of branding that we do can be used for all of it.” Andelman explained how the spirit of the festival, the onward journey to betterment through positive manifestation, can reverberate for years to come. “It’s not this one-time, one-day event. I hope that people in the future, say five years from now, are like ‘hey, have you been to Nederdays?’ and you can say ‘which one?’”

“As long as it stays local, that’s all I care about,” Schauffler said, in reference to the essence of Nederdays. “I think my biggest thing is the fact that we’re just doing it. Sometimes you just need to do something.”

“We had a bunch of ideas that we’re not going to be able to throw together in two and a half months, but there’s always next year,” Cacek added.

As for the next steps for Andelman and the Nederdays crew, apart from coordinating with local businesses, there was organizing the keystone events, creating the graphics, and building the website.

“I really need volunteers. This is the time to come out and show your support and I will diligently assign you to something fun,” Andelman said.

“It’s totally new, it’s organic, it’s grassroots, and we’re going to see where it goes! I have probably fifteen volunteers who love to do whatever I do and I love them, so the minute they’re reading about this and I have a breath to tell them, they’re in, and we’ll have a really fun crew.”

Nederland has a community capable of creating life from the ashes of the loss of FDGD, to organize together and utilize our strengths to make something out of nothing. The passion that residents have for the natural beauty that we’re surrounded by, the art, music, and food that is created here are all testaments to why Nederland needs a festival like Nederdays. A celebration of us, for us… taking place here in Nederland this March 24 and 25.

To contact Stephanie Andelman as a local business owner with an idea on how to participate in Nederdays, or as a local resident who desires to volunteer and be a part of this year-one festival, call her at 303-931-9017.