May 17, 2025 is next year’s re-start date
Graham’s city council made it official this week. The annual spring arts festival, popular for 25 years around Court Square, is coming back next May.
Arts Around the Square will be the official name, Graham’s city council decided Tuesday night, for the resumption of the name formerly used by the Alamance Arts Council which originally sponsored the annual arts and crafts festival.
The council formalized the decision, rejecting two alternative names put forward by the city’s recreation department – one a takeoff on the historic name, Arts Squared, and Love Graham Festival.
Mayor Jennifer Talley made the motion for the finalizing the name of the festival which she has championed bringing back. The council had paved the way for its restoration by including $50,000 in the city’s budget for the fiscal year that began July 1.
Talley has consistently urged that the name be returned, noting that even in the budget, the line item was for Arts Around the Square.
Talley said last month the historic festival name was “well known” and that “people have wanted that to come back” as an annual event. “Why re-invent the wheel?” she posited.
The council also unanimously approved the road closings of the 100 blocks of North and South Main, and East and West Elm streets between 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. to accommodate the Saturday, May 17, 2025 date for the first return installment of the festival.
It would then be held the third Saturday of May in future years, the recreation department’s program director Emma Griffin told the council last month.
The festival itself will operate between 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Griffin told the council last month.
Four stages would be set up Griffin outlined for the council last month: at the ends of North Main, South Main, and West Elm streets, and in the amphitheater beside Colonial Hardware.
The original Arts ‘Round the Square was sponsored by the Alamance Arts Council as an annual fundraiser for the arts group, but declining crowds and escalating expenses ultimately caused the board of directors of the arts group to announce the end of the festival in 2002, its 25th year, a few weeks before that year’s event.
