For first time in 37 years, OKC will ring in new year without Opening Night

After 37 years, downtown Oklahoma City will no longer be ringing in the New Year with Opening Night.

Arts Council Oklahoma City announced in July its plans to discontinue its long-running New Year's Eve celebration as well as make major changes to its flagship event, the spring Festival of the Arts.

"With Opening Night, this wasn't the first time that it's been considered in terms of — 'Is it a viable project, and does it meet our mission?'" Arts Council OKC Executive Director Angela Cozby told The Oklahoman over the summer.

Although several New Year's Eve events are planned this year in downtown OKC — including the annual Dec. 31 OKC Thunder home game at Paycom Center, the national tour of "Tina - The Tina Turner Musical" at the Civic Center and a 21-and-older concert and party at The Jones Assembly — there doesn’t seem to be anything that will take the place of Opening Night, a family-friendly performing arts showcase and midnight fireworks display.

In early December, sources at Arts Council OKC and the city told The Oklahoman they've not been contacted by anyone looking to plan an event similar to Opening Night to ring in 2024.

Along with ending its Opening Night New Year's Eve celebration, the nonprofit organization is trimming its April Festival of the Arts from six days to four while extending the event's weekend hours.

"In fall 2021, the board of directors got together and formulated a very aggressive and exciting five-year strategic plan — and part of that was to evaluate our current programming," Cozby said.

"We have to be good stewards of our donor dollars, and we have to be responsible. And it's not responsible to do something just for the sake of doing it."

Changes to big events follow big changes behind the scenes of Arts Council OKC

Started in 1967 with the Festival of the Arts, the organization's mission is to bring the arts and the community together. It does that through free or low-cost, large-scale downtown Oklahoma City cultural events and arts outreach activities focused on underserved populations.

Cozby was named Arts Council OKC's new executive director in spring 2022. She was hired after longtime executive director Peter Dolese announced his intention to retire after 40 years as a volunteer and staffer with the organization.

She previously worked for Arts Council OKC in various roles, including Festival of the Arts director from 2008 to 2014. In between, Cozby was vice president of research and operations for the Lynn Institute for Healthcare Research.

"I did quantitative and qualitative research, so that background has been instrumental in looking at our programming," she said. "As we began planning Opening Night in late summer 2022, we were very careful — more so than ever — to really gather every bit of information that we could, from how much staff time was being put into the planning ... to how difficult or easy it was to recruit volunteers."

Why is Arts Council OKC eliminating its Opening Night New Year's Eve event?

Dropping attendance, particularly during the paid portion of the event, was a primary factor in Arts Council OKC's decision to discontinue the Opening Night New Year's Eve celebration.

"This event was started to bring people to downtown Oklahoma City and give families an opportunity to celebrate a holiday when there wasn't hardly anything for them to do 37 years ago to ring in the New Year," Cozby said.

"Well, now fast forward, there's so many opportunities, it's hard to choose, whether it's a Thunder game or going to Uptown Get Down on 23rd Street or The Jones Assembly.”

Started in 1986, the family-friendly Opening Night New Year's Eve celebration would feature performances by an array of Oklahoma entertainers at several downtown Oklahoma City venues. Attendees could buy wristbands and walk from venue to venue to see the performances and take part in children's activities inside the Civic Center.

Opening Night annually culminated in a free outdoor concert by a local band in Bicentennial Park that led up to a midnight countdown. Fireworks and the ceremonial raising of a giant, lighted ball would herald the end of one year and beginning of the next.

"When you're going into the Downtown Library or the Museum of Art and seeing local performers, that's our mission," Cozby said. "More recently, (we were) seeing a decline in the attendance of those performances but also later in the evening as the Thunder game ends and people are filtering out of other activities, the crowds coming just for the fireworks and the finale."

Recruiting volunteers to put on a big holiday event had become more difficult, and planning around the unpredictable Oklahoma winter weather has been a struggle.

"It was a negative 4 (degree) wind chill outside one year. The musicians actually could not keep their instruments from locking up," recalled Arts Council OKC Festival Director Seth Lewis.

By eliminating Opening Night, Cozby said Arts Council OKC will have more capacity to focus on programs that fulfill its mission, “which is not fireworks in downtown Oklahoma City."

When is the 2024 Festival of the Arts and how will it be different?

Arts Council OKC revealed the big changes to its programs ahead of opening the July 29-Sept. 29 application period for visual artists, food vendors and performers interested in participating in the 2024 Festival of the Arts.

The 58th annual downtown OKC "rite of spring" will be April 25-28 in Bicentennial Park. Next year will mark the debut of the event's new four-day, Thursday-Sunday format, which will replace the longtime Tuesday-Sunday, six-day schedule.

"We were the only six-day festival in the nation. The typical festival is three to four days long, and that's what artists enjoy doing. (For the) artists, this is a profession ... and they go from festival to festival. And it's hard for them to rebuild their supply of their work when they're going straight from our six-day festival and traveling again," Lewis said.

"By shortening it to four days, you're going to see some great, new, fresh art coming in as artists are applying to our festival that have wanted to come to our festival before, but they chose not to apply."

The Festival of the Arts still will showcase 144 visual artists, and after holding spots for award winners and top sellers, about 100 spaces will be available as the application process opens in two weeks.

The festival had one of its biggest years for art sales in 2022, with $1.9 million. Even with four days of cold, rainy weather, Cozby said the festival still made $1.7 million in art sales in 2023.

"We have years and years of these financial records that show primarily people come out on the weekend, when they're off work," she said. "If the community was here Tuesday and Wednesday, we would find a way to make it work — but they're not here.”

As with Opening Night, recruiting volunteers for Festival of the Arts has become more challenging.

"It's really difficult to get the 300 volunteers that we need onsite to keep the event up and running at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday ... or noon on a Wednesday because people have to work," Cozby said.

What will be the new hours for the downtown OKC Festival of the Arts?

The 2024 Festival of the Arts will run fewer days, but it will be open an hour later over the weekend. The new hours will be 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, April 25; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 26-27; and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, April 28.

"Then, imagine that Saturday night with a really cool, hopefully nationally known band — we're not gonna have Taylor Swift: we wish; we'll try — something that's really out of the ordinary," Cozby said.

"It's the same festival — we've got our Tarpley Tappers and your local schools on the stage, and you can get your favorite Indian taco and an ice-cold beer at a reasonable price — but the art is going to be much more exciting."

The festival's earlier start on Sunday will accommodate OKC Memorial Marathon participants.

"They're coming over before we're open. They run, they grab their medal and celebrate, and they're already heading over to our festival," Lewis said. "So, let's open up and be ready for them.”

How will the changes help Arts Council OKC better follow its mission?

Arts Council OKC will continue its fledgling Fresh Paint mural project, a partnership with the OKC Thunder that had become a key component of Opening Night, but incorporate the program into the Festival of the Arts. Applications opened in early December for Fresh Paint at the Festival of the Arts.

The nonprofit is adding an emerging artist mentorship program to the spring event, too.

Discontinuing Opening Night also will allow Arts Council OKC to grow its All Access Arts programs. That includes its Arts in Schools, Creative Aging and Teen Arts Council initiatives, as well as its summer programs Neighborhood Arts, a partnership with the Metropolitan Library System, and Arts in the Park, a partnership with the OKC Parks and Recreation Department.

"We're really excited about expanding All Access Arts and doing more with that programming, because it truly does make a more life-lasting impact on individuals," Cozby said.

"And we're able to create a bigger, brighter experience with Festival of the Arts now, too."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Opening Night in OKC for New Year's Eve is no more after 37 years