ELEVATE: Public Art Festival Provides Cultural Enrichment and Community Dialogue

The City of Atlanta – Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs announced this years annual ELEVATE: Public Art Festival will be held in Atlanta’s historic West End neighborhood. ELEVATE: Equity, Activism, Engagement serves a platform through art for dialogue about inequality and social injustice.

2020 has been a challenging year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against police violence toward African Americans. Elevate gives the opportunity for community leaders, artists, and the public to examine these issues through conversation, visual arts, music, dance and poetry. The ultimate goal is promote community building and activism is positive direction.

“We want this year’s ELEVATE festival to be a platform for dialogue about important issues, provide resources for activism, and help set a course for positive change,” states Camille Russell Love, Executive Director of the City of Atlanta – Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. “For the first time, the festival enters the digital space. We invite people to join us for virtual events including visual art experiences, dance, poetry, lively conversations, film screenings, musical performances and more. All of the events are free.”

The Historic West End of Atlanta has always served as diverse cultural section of the city, along with many historic landmarks. This event will also give Atlanta residents a chance what the West has to offer from a cultural perspective such as the Hammond House Museum, to the Black Shrine of Madonna.

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This year’s Curator for ELEVATE: Equity, Activism, Engagement, Leatrice Ellzy Wright, Executive Director of Hammonds House Museum, has put together various enrichment events and program:

• Mural installations honoring civil rights leader Reverend James Orange and Black women activists from the West End community.
• An online and in person voter registration event at the West End MARTA station.
• A conversation with New York Times best-selling authors Pearl Cleage and Tayari Jones, who frequently feature Atlanta’s West End community in their work. This event will be hosted by writer and co-host/producer of Collective Knowledge, Gail O’Neill.
• The opening of Hammonds House Museum’s exhibition Elements Of A Revolution.
• A conversation about the music of movements with singer-songwriter-guitarist Toshi Reagon who has toured with Lenny Kravitz, Nona Hendryx, Elvis Costello and Me’shell NdegéOcello and whose performances with her mother, Bernice Johnson Reagon-founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock-are legendary.
• A conversation between the executive directors of Atlanta Contemporary and Les Abattoirs/Toulouse to discuss challenges of promoting art during COVID-19, issues of gender equality and racism in their field. Since 1974 Atlanta and Toulouse have been Sister Cities.
• A screening of the stirring new documentary, “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” an intimate account of the legendary U.S. Representative’s life, legacy, and more than 60 years of activism.
• An Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performance of Lazarus created by acclaimed hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris. The ballet connects the past and the present in a powerful work that addresses racial inequities America faced when Mr. Ailey founded his dance company in 1958 and still faces today.
• Renowned artist Carrie Mae Weems, in collaboration with SCAD, will launch RESIST COVID/TAKE 6, a public art initiative raising critical heath awareness about COVID-19 and the ways racial inequities have manifested in the pandemic.
• Musical performances by Kebbi Williams and The Wolf Pack, The Royal Krunk Jazz Orkestra, Gritz and Jelly Butter, Tony Hightower and the Henry Conerway Trio, and Julie Dexter.

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The festival will be from Sunday, October 4 to Saturday, October 10, 2020. This year’s festival events will be virtual.
There are several more artist listed to perform. To check the full schedule visit the website www.elevateatlart.com for more information.