Arts and culture continue to take center stage in downtown Charlotte. Arts Night Out, a collaboration between Windwalker Underground Gallery, CharlotteRising, and the Arts Council of Greater Lansing, will fill the community will local art Friday, June 15 during Charlotte Celebrates.
“We have been tossing around the idea of bringing Arts Night Out into downtown Charlotte for a couple of years now, but the time never felt right,” said Kalli Dempsey of Windwalker Underground Gallery. “Windwalker and CharlotteRising have been working together to tangibly support the idea of art being a catalyst for a revitalized and vibrant downtown, and Arts Night Out seemed like a perfect project to bring downtown venues together with a creative center.”
Dempsey said the goal was to start small, locating seven to eight artists and venues, but as discussions started with local businesses and artists, the event continued to grow. Charlotte’s inaugural Arts Night Out will feature 17 local artists who have been paired with 17 local businesses to display their work.
“As residents stroll through downtown they will have a chance to watch artists at work, listen to live music, purchase art, make art, and hopefully it will encourage people to walk into a downtown store that they have never walked into before,” Dempsey said.
The event has the potential to be an economic driver for local small businesses, said Dillon Rush, executive director of CharlotteRising.
“For a rather simple event, we look forward to experiencing great social and economic benefit from Arts Night Out,” Rush said. “Flavorful events like this position downtown as the center of activity, garnering additional foot traffic, sales, investment, and contagious positivity.”
Arts Night Out is another example of local organizations working together towards downtown revitalization.
“I often say that my favorite outcome of CharlotteRising has been the partnerships that have developed between our downtown business owners, and this event is really going to highlight those relationships,” Dempsey said.
Arts Night Out in Charlotte will have participating venues paired with various forms of creative artistic expression on both side of the block from the Courthouse all the way to Cut-N-Tease salon, Dempsey said.
“As always, the Charlotte community lives and breathes collaboration, and to have the Arts Council of Greater Lansing reach out to Windwalker and CharlotteRising to lead an Arts Night Out is an honor and a testament to how we do things,” Rush said. “They provided the foundation for us to build this event and we are extremely grateful. Furthermore, to run this special evening on the Friday of the Chamber of Commerce’s Charlotte Celebrates is a huge advantage. For CharlotteRising, the goal was to connect this large community event a little more to economic development, and this collaborative event perfectly fits our transformation strategy and business mix.”
All of the venues and artist exhibits listed on MyArtsNightOut.com with a printable community map showing you where to find all of the fun.
