FARMINGTON — The UMF Art Gallery will hold its third annual Water Bear Confabulum, an alternative arts festival to celebrate diverse artistic and community voices. This year’s festival will take place from 1-6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 28, in the art alleys in downtown Farmington and on an art trail in nearby Bonney Woods and Flint Woods.

Art work by Maggie Libby, Beth Wittenberg and other artists will begin to appear the week before the event to create collaborative and interactive artworks in the alleys.

This year the exhibit will extend into the Bonney and Flint Woods adjacent to downtown including artworks by guest artists Sarah Bouchard, Michel Droge, Bethany Engstrom, Rick Osterhaut, Jan Piribeck, James Provenzano, Jesse Potts and Susan Smith.

A 5K Trail Run will begin at 1 p.m. at the Old North Church at the corner of High and Court streets. With a suggested donation of $20 for adults and $10 for children, this event will benefit local high school students coming to the University of Maine at Farmington who are interested in the arts and the environment.

The annual trick-or-treat trail in the alleys will be held from 1-6 p.m.

The Water Bear is a unique and enduring animal living unseen among us, adapting to new environments, even to the extreme landscape of outer space. A confabulum combines the meanings of confabulation: first, to simply engage in conversation, and second, the psychological meaning–the brain’s compulsion to generate fictions to fill absences in memory.

For more information, email maline@maine.edu, call 778-1062 or visit artgalleryumf.org.