Community festivals allow students opportunities to meet key contact people and investigate local resources. Further, the excitement of the social festival is infectious; it encourages learning among people of multiple ages in a common area. Festivals serve to define the community, transmit culture, and allow the community to participate in education. The field trip is a research activity where students gather information to be shared in the classroom with their peers. This research is directly connected to their community and their sense of place. Finally, the experience of being surrounded by a cadre of dedicated experts and seeing another type of community is exhilarating. Students learn with and from members of the community when they experience festivals. Although a festival is a good way to integrate inquiry methods into student field trips, it is not the only way to take a field trip and other types of sites would require different methods. The author suggests that social studies educators do need to promote inquiry to encourage students to hold problems as their own. Students need suggestions and limits set by teachers on where to go, what to do, and how to do it. By giving students some latitude in selecting an assignment that motivates them, teachers encourage decision-making skills through this event. (Contains 9 figures and 11 notes.)