Community Calendar

May 1 - May 31 / Join us for a month-long celebration of new vegan dishes all over Kalamazoo!

Back by popular demand for the fourth year in a row, businesses across Kalamazoo will showcase exciting special vegan menu items for an entire month, giving everyone the opportunity to explore creative plant-based dishes crafted by talented local chefs.

How It Works:

1- Visit participating restaurants across Kalamazoo.
2- Try their exclusive vegan offerings.
3- Share your experience: Rate and review the dishes you try, comment, post photos of your favorite meals, and tag us at @KalamazooVeganChefChallenge.

This event is open to everyone, not just vegans! It’s about bringing our community together to celebrate incredible food and support our area's chefs.

Get Involved: Looking for ways to connect? Volunteer with us! We’re seeking passionate individuals to help with outreach, event promotion, and community building throughout the month. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and make a difference! Volunteer using this link: TinyURL.com/VOLVCC.

Join us in making Kalamazoo an even more inclusive, vibrant, and compassionate community. For details on participating businesses, menus, partners, and more, visit our website at veganchefchallenge.org/Kalamazoo.

The Kalamazoo Vegan Chef Challenge is hosted by Vegan Outreach and in collaboration with Vegan Kalamazoo.

Join us for a special Artful Evening with Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto! Semmelhack is the curator of Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks. During this program, she will talk about why shoes matter and about how designers today are revolutionizing what we will put on our feet tomorrow. If you’ve enjoyed Future Now, don’t miss this opportunity to meet the curator behind the exhibition!

Semmelhack’s work focuses on the intersections of fashion, culture, and economics, with a particular interest in the history of footwear. She is widely quoted in the media from the New York Times to Vogue, and since starting at the Bata Shoe Museum in 2000, she has curated over thirty exhibitions and written fourteen books and catalogues and over thirty chapters and articles. Her most recent exhibitions and publications related to sneakers include Art/Wear: Sneakers x Artists (2024), Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks (Rizzoli:2022), Collab: Sneakers x Culture (Rizzoli: 2019), and Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture (Rizzoli: 2015).

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

All hybrid events will be livestreamed to our YouTube page and can be found under the “Live” tab. Recordings of select past events are available on YouTube as well.

May 1 - May 31 / Join us for a month-long celebration of new vegan dishes all over Kalamazoo!

Back by popular demand for the fourth year in a row, businesses across Kalamazoo will showcase exciting special vegan menu items for an entire month, giving everyone the opportunity to explore creative plant-based dishes crafted by talented local chefs.

How It Works:

1- Visit participating restaurants across Kalamazoo.
2- Try their exclusive vegan offerings.
3- Share your experience: Rate and review the dishes you try, comment, post photos of your favorite meals, and tag us at @KalamazooVeganChefChallenge.

This event is open to everyone, not just vegans! It’s about bringing our community together to celebrate incredible food and support our area's chefs.

Get Involved: Looking for ways to connect? Volunteer with us! We’re seeking passionate individuals to help with outreach, event promotion, and community building throughout the month. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and make a difference! Volunteer using this link: TinyURL.com/VOLVCC.

Join us in making Kalamazoo an even more inclusive, vibrant, and compassionate community. For details on participating businesses, menus, partners, and more, visit our website at veganchefchallenge.org/Kalamazoo.

The Kalamazoo Vegan Chef Challenge is hosted by Vegan Outreach and in collaboration with Vegan Kalamazoo.

May 1 - May 31 / Join us for a month-long celebration of new vegan dishes all over Kalamazoo!

Back by popular demand for the fourth year in a row, businesses across Kalamazoo will showcase exciting special vegan menu items for an entire month, giving everyone the opportunity to explore creative plant-based dishes crafted by talented local chefs.

How It Works:

1- Visit participating restaurants across Kalamazoo.
2- Try their exclusive vegan offerings.
3- Share your experience: Rate and review the dishes you try, comment, post photos of your favorite meals, and tag us at @KalamazooVeganChefChallenge.

This event is open to everyone, not just vegans! It’s about bringing our community together to celebrate incredible food and support our area's chefs.

Get Involved: Looking for ways to connect? Volunteer with us! We’re seeking passionate individuals to help with outreach, event promotion, and community building throughout the month. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and make a difference! Volunteer using this link: TinyURL.com/VOLVCC.

Join us in making Kalamazoo an even more inclusive, vibrant, and compassionate community. For details on participating businesses, menus, partners, and more, visit our website at veganchefchallenge.org/Kalamazoo.

The Kalamazoo Vegan Chef Challenge is hosted by Vegan Outreach and in collaboration with Vegan Kalamazoo.

Foraging the Edible Wilderness
Thursday 5/14 5:00-6:30pm; Saturday 5/16 10:00-11:30am
Meet: Visitor Center Main Parking Lot Sundial

Join KNC staff to learn some foraging basics of spring. Grab your basket and enjoy finding the edible treasures around us on a guided hike. Dress for the weather as this program will be entirely outdoors.

Register for May 14

Register for May 16

Fee: Members $14, Non-Members $20. Please register.

Saturday, May 16, 10 am – Noon
Meet: Auditorium

Steve Brown of Kalamazoo is a poet who writes with “the eye of a reporter, the touch of a painter and the heart of a storyteller.”

Steve will be reading from his latest book, News of Need (2025), capturing more than 40 portraits of people and natural landscapes that have been left out, looked over, or worked to the bone, but not without the hope of revelation or redemption.

Steve has staged his work internationally, been awarded residencies at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Since 2016 Brown has been co-founding and leading a foundation in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His books will be available for purchase during the event.

Fee: Included in regular KNC admission; KNC Members free! Drop in program.

Inspired by the innovation and history of sneakers, we will provide origami paper to fold your own mini shoe! A variety of styles and difficulty levels will be provided. Check out the exhibition Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks for inspiration and then drop by the library to try your hand at this detailed paper project.

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.

Please note that this event will not be livestreamed or posted on YouTube.

May 1 - May 31 / Join us for a month-long celebration of new vegan dishes all over Kalamazoo!

Back by popular demand for the fourth year in a row, businesses across Kalamazoo will showcase exciting special vegan menu items for an entire month, giving everyone the opportunity to explore creative plant-based dishes crafted by talented local chefs.

How It Works:

1- Visit participating restaurants across Kalamazoo.
2- Try their exclusive vegan offerings.
3- Share your experience: Rate and review the dishes you try, comment, post photos of your favorite meals, and tag us at @KalamazooVeganChefChallenge.

This event is open to everyone, not just vegans! It’s about bringing our community together to celebrate incredible food and support our area's chefs.

Get Involved: Looking for ways to connect? Volunteer with us! We’re seeking passionate individuals to help with outreach, event promotion, and community building throughout the month. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and make a difference! Volunteer using this link: TinyURL.com/VOLVCC.

Join us in making Kalamazoo an even more inclusive, vibrant, and compassionate community. For details on participating businesses, menus, partners, and more, visit our website at veganchefchallenge.org/Kalamazoo.

The Kalamazoo Vegan Chef Challenge is hosted by Vegan Outreach and in collaboration with Vegan Kalamazoo.

May 1 - May 31 / Join us for a month-long celebration of new vegan dishes all over Kalamazoo!

Back by popular demand for the fourth year in a row, businesses across Kalamazoo will showcase exciting special vegan menu items for an entire month, giving everyone the opportunity to explore creative plant-based dishes crafted by talented local chefs.

How It Works:

1- Visit participating restaurants across Kalamazoo.
2- Try their exclusive vegan offerings.
3- Share your experience: Rate and review the dishes you try, comment, post photos of your favorite meals, and tag us at @KalamazooVeganChefChallenge.

This event is open to everyone, not just vegans! It’s about bringing our community together to celebrate incredible food and support our area's chefs.

Get Involved: Looking for ways to connect? Volunteer with us! We’re seeking passionate individuals to help with outreach, event promotion, and community building throughout the month. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and make a difference! Volunteer using this link: TinyURL.com/VOLVCC.

Join us in making Kalamazoo an even more inclusive, vibrant, and compassionate community. For details on participating businesses, menus, partners, and more, visit our website at veganchefchallenge.org/Kalamazoo.

The Kalamazoo Vegan Chef Challenge is hosted by Vegan Outreach and in collaboration with Vegan Kalamazoo.

For adults and teens ages 15+.

Join us to watch a special edition of The Grocery List Show. Share your thoughts in a discussion following the film. Refreshments and beverages will be provided, or you may bring your own dinner.

Hosted by Top Chef contender Chrissy Camba, The Grocery List Show is a trip to five bustling international grocery stores in America and the communities they serve. Special guests and food enthusiasts join Chrissy to shop for ingredients and cook a favorite family recipe, as they celebrate global food traditions over a shared meal.