This year’s Peace Fair will celebrate 10 years of grass roots community activism coming together to share our work and our vision for a more just and peaceful world, according to PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, which is organizing the event.

The fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday on the Mall in downtown Brunswick.

“We started 10 years ago, commemorating the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said PeaceWo rk s member Rosalie Paul in an interview Thursday. “We were focused on opposing war and militarism. Since that time, we have broadened our focus. The realities of war and militarism are infinitely connected with every other issue on the planet, whether that’s environmental or economic issues.”

Paul said the fair has, in recent years, included “more and more voices” from the environmental movements and spiritual communities, “knowing that all of it is intimately connected.”

The fair has evolved into an event in which “more and more people … come together as a community,” said Paul.

This year’s theme will again be Children Ask the World of Us, which poses questions on how to make a more secure, safe and compassionate world free of violence and war for the world’s children.

“All of us want to build a world in which all children can thrive. And we can take steps in that direction by thinking about some of what needs to change so that our vision can be realized. So the Peace Fair invites the community to come together to play games and make buttons and plant seeds and paint murals as a way of getting excited about our power to make change,” said Paul.

PeaceWorks goal with the fair is to help build a sustainable world for children. How to create such a world will be addressed in a series of exhibits and activities set up in tents along the mall.

Activists will be “speaking passionately” about issues that concern them, and PeaceWorks will also give an award for Peacemaker in Maine, according to Paul.

Paul said PeaceWorks tries to incorporate elements of fun at the fair along with a serious message. Music at the fair will include a Pete Seeger tribute, steel drums and bluegrass music.

In tandem with the fair, Bowdoin College’s International Music Festival will present “Old MacDonald’s Farm and other String Quintet Adventures of Peace and Harmony” at 10:30 a.m. in the Morrell Room at Curtis Memorial Library.

PeaceWorks has been protesting regularly about what they call “our country’s violent response” to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Members have often gathered on the mall Friday evenings to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For more information go to www.peaceworksbrunswickme.org.

jswinconeck@timesrecord.com

SCHEDULED HIGHLIGHTS from this weekend’s 10th annual Peace Fair in Brunswick. All events take place at the Mall in Brunswick unless otherwise noted: • PeaceWork’s Tribute to Pete Seeger. 1-2:30 p.m. • Storyteller, author, musician Phil Hoose • Chris Beaven and his Island Beats Steel Drum Band • Book Signing with Phil Hoose • Family Concert “Old MacDonad’s Farm,” Curtis Memorial Library Morrell Room, 10:30 a.m.