Kentuck Festival will move to Snow Hinton Park in Tuscaloosa for 2024
As its first non-Northport site, this year's 53rd Kentuck Festival of the Arts will set up in Tuscaloosa's Snow Hinton Park Oct. 19-20.
The festival, and Kentuck Art Center which expanded contemporaneously with its success, grew from roots in a 1971 downtown Northport craft and heritage festival. Last fall, after contract negotiations jammed with the Northport City Council, Kentuck announced it was seeking another festival home for 2024.
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For all its years since the '71 event, the Kentuck Festival had been held in Northport's Kentuck Park. The art center remains at 503 Main Ave., downtown Northport, on a campus with two buildings it owns, artists' studios, and a courtyard it rents.
Among advantages to the move will be increased acreage, more easily-accessible paved paths, and new bathrooms, benches and pavilions arriving as part of the city of Tuscaloosa's $10.2 million in improvements for Snow Hinton Park.
"Kentuck Park is beautiful, with all those old pines, the walkways, the history," said Exa Skinner, who became executive director of Kentuck Jan. 1. But the festival's longtime home endured accessibility challenges in its uneven paths, and artists sometimes complained about booth placements in an increasingly crowded footprint.
This year's festival won't compete with a University of Alabama home football game. UA is scheduled to play Tennessee on Oct. 19 in Knoxville.
The city of Northport is planning to build a sports complex adjacent to Kentuck Park, which alarmed the art center's board, especially after a massive mound of dirt arose before last year's 52nd festival, one that displaced what had been artists' access and VIP parking.
The Tuscaloosa-Kentuck Festival agreement is for 2024; no details have been set yet for 2025 or beyond. Planning for each year's festival begins roughly the same time the previous one ends. In 2023, Kentuck felt it didn't have the certainty needed to go forward with Northport, so its board felt compelled to seek firmer ground.
Offers flooded in from other municipalities around the South, hoping to snag the beloved event, but the plan was always to remain in Tuscaloosa County. Late last year, Kentuck announced it was moving the festival to Tuscaloosa for 2024, and pondering two possible locations: Snow Hinton, and the newer Parker-Haun Park, adjacent to the Mercedes-Benz Amphitheater. That well-lit downtown site would have been a tight squeeze, at just 4 acres.
"Some folks may feel disappointed, not knowing about the renovations at Snow Hinton, but this is going to be an exciting change," Skinner said.
Kentuck will use about 10 acres of the 40-acre park, setting up in an oval to encompass booths for its more than 270 artists, and performance spaces for music and spoken-word, the kids' hands-on activities area and more. There will also be food and drink vendors, demonstration spaces, VIP parking and hospitality, and artist parking and hospitality, as has been the case for years.
Named for C. Snow Hinton, Jr., mayor of Tuscaloosa from 1969-1976, that swath of green space was purchased by the city in 1975, as the still-new McFarland Mall, and interstate construction, drew the city southward. Snow Hinton Park anchors the highly visible junction of Hargrove Road and McFarland Boulevard, within a stone's throw of University Mall and Meadowbrook Shopping Center, and Midtown Village more of a long punt. Though heavily surrounded by commercial development, old-Tuscaloosa residential areas also abut and extend from its east and south.
The ongoing renovations will add better lighting and camera systems, expanded parking and vehicle access, and a central plaza and walking path. Dirt's being moved now; those labors are expected to be completed by Labor Day.
The city of Tuscaloosa has worked closely with Kentuck in recent months, Skinner said, to help select and abet the move, and further cement Kentuck's inroads to Tuscaloosa. Though the bulk of Kentuck's efforts remain in Northport, it operates a gallery in the Druid City's Hotel Indigo, and has maintained other ties with Tuscaloosa.
In January, the city of Tuscaloosa's finance committee approved a funding revision request, bumping its Kentuck contribution from $20,000 to $100,000. Councilors voted enthusiastically for the change, with District 4 representative Lee Busby, who chairs the committee, saying "I think this is a wonderful move for Tuscaloosa and for Kentuck. I think y'all are gonna add to us, and we're gonna add to y'all. Welcome."
Skinner, who had been deputy director before the 2024 promotion, lauded the city at that meeting for how closely Kentuck had been allowed to work with contractors and others. Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox echoed her thoughts about the collaboration: "We feel the same. This has been a real pleasure."
The request Kentuck had made was designed for heightened programming in Tuscaloosa. In addition to its October festival, the nonprofit organization creates events and activities all year, including first Thursday Art Nights, third Saturday Art Markets, ongoing exhibits, a gift shop, workshops and other outreach.
With the city's expanded funding, third Saturday markets will move to Tuscaloosa's old Queen City Pool site — The pool was closed and filled in years ago; its bathhouse was fully renovated and is now home to the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum — once per quarter, and be held in conjunction with farmers' markets, housed across Jack Warner Parkway at the River Market.
Kentuck will also continue its work with the Barnes YMCA, providing art supplies and instruction to children attending camps, and grow its Boxes of Joy project, which likewise supplies arts and instruction to economically disadvantaged kids ages 5-12. Boxes of Joy currently operates within Northport Housing Authority, Tuscaloosa One Place Extended Day Program at Matthews Elementary and the Tuscaloosa Juvenile Detention Center; for 2024, it will extend to the Tuscaloosa Housing Authority.
In December, Kentuck had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tuscaloosa council, a handshake to start the collaboration that would relocate the 53rd Kentuck Festival to Snow Hinton Park.
Disagreements over Northport's proposed contract for 2024 had led the Kentuck board to empower staff to begin seeking a new location. Concerns including a lowered funding offer, and the wish from the council that Kentuck lock in to hold the event within Northport for five years ― previous contracts had all been one year ― without guaranteeing the site would indeed be Kentuck Park.
There was also that mound to contend with at the 2023 festival, 140,000 cubic square feet of dirt purchased from Tuscaloosa, dug from the ongoing $65 million project to extend McWright's Ferry Road.
With planning on the sports complex rolling, Northport, which got a deal on the dirt if it accepted right away, had to store it someplace. To some Kentuck patrons, artists and board, that mound loomed. There was concern the festival could be impacted, even to the point of being canceled, or postponed, due to the work, though the city's staff contained the mound before the 2023 festival opened. Still, those shadows thrown seemed an ill omen to some, and the Kentuck board felt coordination and communication with Northport's council had become difficult.
Even before gates open, Kentuck invests $140,000 or more, just for festival preparation. Annual proceeds usually double that, keeping financial wheels rolling for the center. Hundreds of artists depend on coveted slots, with Kentuck falling near the end of the arts festival season. More than 300 volunteers put in sweat-equity to make the show go on. Many thousands view the resulting Kentuck Festival of the Arts a jewel of their autumn.
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The Kentuck Festival of the Arts has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, Southern Living, American Style Magazine, and National Geographic Traveler, and been named a “Local Legacy” by the United States Library of Congress. The Alabama Department of Tourism picked it as one of the best top-10 events to attend, and Alabama Magazine named it among the "Best of Bama 2022." In 2018, the Festival was ranked fifth in the nation, based on artists' self-reported sales, in classic and contemporary craft shows.
"It's a damn big endeavor," said Kentuck Board President Bobby Bragg, when the MOU was signed in December. "We are not trying to scale back the festival by any means. This coming year, we're trying to make the best of a difficult situation."
The two-day October festival draws about 20,000 visitors annually, coming from parts far and wide. On display and demonstration are works by folk, outsider and contemporary artists. The Brother Ben Music Stage hosts Americana, gospel, blues, folk and other roots music, and the Kathryn Tucker Windham Spoken Word Stage features fiction and non-fiction prose writers, poets, and other literary artists. Kentuck for Kids offers children's hands-on events. Traditional craftspeople such as the metalworkers from Sloss Furnace put on displays, and encourage patrons to create their own take-home works.
Snow Hinton Park renovations were underway before negotiations for the festival began. Assuming renovations finish on time, in September, Kentuck should easily have the several required days to set up in the new site.
"We're excited to be the big event that helps celebrate the park's renovations and re-opening," Skinner said. "It should make people look at it a whole new way."
Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Kentuck Art Center chooses Snow Hinton Park for annual festival
