Celebration Cinema Studio Park and Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. (DGRI) are bringing free outdoor movies back to the Studio Park Piazza this summer. This year's Sunset Cinema series is presented by Mercantile Bank.

• movies in the park
• Studio Park
• Summer Series
• Outdoor Movies

The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) invites the community to enjoy the second year of Thursdays on the Terrace, a free summer series featuring art, music, food and community in downtown Grand Rapids.

• Grand Rapids Art Museum
• Summer Fun

Electric Forest is just around the corner, and limited passes remain. This annual music and arts festival in brings tens of thousands of people from around the world to the woods of Double JJ Ranch in Rothbury. 

• Electric Forest
• Festivals
• Summer Fun

Get Out is Your Monthly Guide to What’s Great in the Great Outdoors. I’ve lived in West Michigan for just short of 40 years and, through all its changes, what has always been here are the green spaces. I spent time at Johnson Park in my 20s disc golfing, though I was never very good and often just tagged along. 

• Get Out
• Summer Fun
• Nature
• Web Exclusive
• Friends of Grand Rapids Parks

The smell of popcorn, the rush to get a good spot, throwing blankets and pillows in a truck bed, tuning the radio to the required station … the nostalgia of an outdoor or drive-in movie in the summertime is strong. 

• movies in the park
• Summer Fun
• Summer Series
• Movies

West Michigan is full of festivals this year, with dozens of options covering everything from the mainstream to the obscure. We have fests for art, food, music, beer, culture and so much more. Here’s our list for the year ahead.

• local music
• Festivals
• Summer Fun
• Summer Series

Get Out is Your Monthly Guide to What’s Great in the Great Outdoors. I can’t remember exactly what I was doing. Maybe it was climbing into a raft to go winter paddling. Or hiking up a steep hill. Or easing myself into a kayak. But whatever activity it was, when I got home, I realized that a lot of what I write about in this column isn’t accessible to everyone.

• Get Out
• Outdoor Fun

As vibrant spring vegetables and early summer fruits find their way into the sun, it’s the perfect time for farmers market season to begin in earnest.

• Outdoor Fun
• Farmers Markets

Our guide to events, goings-on and things to do in Grand Rapids and all around West Michigan for the months of May and June.

Get Out is Your Monthly Guide to What’s Great in the Great Outdoors. It’s that time of year when we come out of winter torpor, stretch our limbs, and start getting busy with spring things. Though I try to get outdoors in all the seasons, it’s spring that really energizes me.

• Get Out
• Outdoor Fun
• Nature
• Web Exclusive