The National Folk Festival, which enlivened the Bangor waterfront for the past three summers, appealed to a broad spectrum of people young and old. Now 2005 American Folk Festival organizers have an equally rich lineup of artists and exhibitors to entertain different age groups and people from diverse walks of life.

Discovery Museum director Andrea Stark has organized this year’s entertainment for children. Special performances and activities just for kids will held in Pickering Square and on Water Street.

“We’ll have a children and family area with lots of crafts and activities,” she said. “The focus this year is on costumes and adornment, so we’ll have all kinds of ways to decorate yourself. We’ll make masks, hats, bracelets and necklaces and have face painting.”

Stark said that Tony Sohns, the museum’s natural history director and an entomologist, will give a presentation called “Wild Creatures of the World” on both Saturday and Sunday.

Several musical acts will be on hand as well.

Greg Boardman & Sons, a Maine family of fiddlers from the Lewiston area, will perform, as will Les Pieds Rigolants (“The Giggling Feet”), also from Lewiston.

Les Pieds Rigolants is “a group of cloggers, step dancers and fiddlers that are all young people and all Franco-Americans,” said Stark. “On Saturday they’ll be joined by Benoit Borque from La Vent du Nord,” a Quebecois musical group.

Swedish fiddler Paul Dahlin will also give a kids-specific performance.

This year’s festival will feature diverse dance forms that will appeal to adults and children, according to Stark.

“With the Git-Hoan Dancers and Jothi Raghavan, as well as the Bahamas Junkanoo Revue, there’s a new influence on dance,” she said.

“It’s all the philosophy of the festival,” she continued. “Good music and good dance appeals to everyone, regardless of age. But we like to have kids stuff as well that lets young people get in a little closer. We try to feature younger performers as well, so they can see someone closer to their age.”