Bread and Roses Heritage Festival

The Bread & Roses Heritage Committee (BRHC) is dedicated to the presentation of an annual free music and cultural festival. Through the collective actions of like-minded individuals throughout the Lawrence community, the committee was established in 1986 and has been active ever since. BRHC was established to keep alive and honor the memory of the great Lawrence textile workers' strike of 1912, popularly known as the "Bread and Roses Strike." BRHC accomplishes this through a program, The Bread and Roses Heritage Festival, that celebrates Lawrence's many cultures, both past and present, and to remember the labor movement's struggle for things we take for granted today.

​The Bread and Roses Heritage Festival is a celebration of the ethnic diversity and labor history of Lawrence, Ma. This annual festival is celebrated on Labor Day in order to honor the most significant event in Lawrence history: the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike. We memorialize the event with a variety of music and dance, poetry and drama, ethnic food, historical demonstrations, and walking and trolley tours, all on or starting from Lawrence's Common. We also host organizations continuing the struggle for social justice today.

​Bread and Roses is the only broadly multicultural festival in Lawrence, the Immigrant City. And it is the only festival in the region, which celebrates the true spirit of Labor Day, in the most appropriate location, the site of the Bread and Roses Strike. The festival is a one-day 'open air' celebration.