About six years ago, the Downtown Little Rock Partnership began focusing on Main Street’s empty buildings by boarding up the windows and creating the Main Street Food Truck Festival (MSFTF) DLRP’s aim was to bring people back to downtown. Since the festival began in 2011, restaurants, offices, a technology park, theaters, and art galleries have opened or reopened on Main Street. In that same time, food truck participation has increased 271% with diverse trucks from across the state joining.
Activation and Small Events
Sub Categories: Activation and Small Events
SouthSounds: The Little Festival that Could
Mobile, Alabama is home to a lively music scene with fans who wanted something new. Old-style festivals kept patrons on-site, minimizing the impact to downtown businesses. A committee formed and came up with a novel concept for a music and art festival. The festival had to be fresh, with a focus on emerging Southern music. Stages would be set up inside existing bars and restaurants.
Biscayne Green – A Public Space Intervention Showcasing a Reimagined Biscayne Boulevard
The 2025 Downtown Miami Master Plan includes a goal to permanently transform Biscayne Boulevard into an urban boulevard that features a pedestrian promenade, emphasizes transit, and provides bicycle infrastructure. An objective of the Biscayne Green Temporary Intervention was to bring awareness of the barrier effect Biscayne Boulevard represents and to showcase how these spaces can be turned around into a local destination for green space, entertainment, and community.
Hamilton NOSH
A week-long celebration of Hamilton’s culinary scene, NOSH, took place during National Small Business Week from October 17 to 23, 2016. The response by the culinary community was overwhelming, chiefly because of the massive embrace by traditional media and those on social media. NOSH produced more events than anticipated, generated a massive amount of positive exposure for the city, and drove sales to participating businesses.
Game On!
While Water Street remains an important corridor in Lower Manhattan, and home to 100,000 workers and 12,000 residents, poor building design and planning and the lack of a vibrant streetscape makes it uninviting to tourists, residents, and people who work in the area. To combat the inertia gripping the cityscape and put Water Street’s potential on display, the Alliance for Downtown New York launched “Game On!” to bring vibrancy and activity to the corridor.
Delray Beach Fashion Week
The 4th Annual Delray Beach Fashion Week was a five-day event that showcased the unique mix of Downtown Delray Beach fashion retailers, designers, salons and artists. The goals of this merchant-driven program were to increase awareness and revenue for retailers, enhance the economic vitality of the entire downtown business community, highlight different neighborhoods and raise funds for the Achievement Centers for Children and Families (ACCF).
First Wednesday Art Walk
For the past 13 years, Downtown Vision Inc. (DVI) has produced the First Wednesday Art Walk in the heart of Downtown Jacksonville. This innovative event acts as an economic development tool supporting downtown merchants and cultural entities while improving the vitality of downtown through the arts. With more than 10,000 people participating each month, Art Walk has grown into a treasured street festival, one that is constantly reimagined to mirror the diversity of Jacksonville.
Activating Underutilized Parking Space for Public Use
During 2016, Anchorage, Alaska entered into a recession; consequently, parking use was showing signs of decline. The ACDA was tasked to re-think usage of existing parking assets. ACDA activated underutilized parking spaces on the rooftop of a parking garage, creating a new community asset for everyone to enjoy. The Rooftop featured a half-court basketball, ping pong tables, a concrete chess table and lots of benches to enjoy a lunch break or take in the beautiful mountain scenery.
Downtown Denver Rink at Skyline Park
The Downtown Denver Rink at Skyline Park is a nearly full-?sized ice rink that sits downtown at the corner of 16th and Arapahoe St. and is open daily from Nov. 22, 2017 Feb. 14, 2018. The rink is part of a series of strategic initiatives from the Downtown Denver Partnership that helps to create diverse and attractive programming and encourage a wide variety of cultural, leisure, entertainment and recreation in Downtown Denver’s parks and public spaces.
LIT CITY Baltimore
In 2016, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore set its sights on Preston Gardens, a green space in Downtown Baltimore positioned between the upper and lower lanes of St. Paul Street, a major artery into the city. With many projects underway, including new color-changing LED lights in the tunnel, the Marketing & Communications team brainstormed events that would engage and excite residents. The team had the idea for a party in the gardens, and it became a massive success!
Things Are Looking Up: BLINK Backstage in Downtown Cincinnati
In October 2017, downtown Cincinnati saw itself with new eyes during the inaugural BLINK light and art festival. The four-day, free event was one of the largest light and art events in the nation, featuring 57 large-scale light installations projected onto iconic buildings and landmarks throughout 20 city blocks. Over one million visitors came to see BLINK, an event that showcased the city’s revitalized urban core, celebrated its historic architecture, and drove record setting traffic downtown.
Books in Bloom
The Downtown Columbia Partnership (DTCP) first presented Books in Bloom in June 2017 as part of the city’s 50th anniversary year. The daylong festival included readings, panel discussions, a poetry wall, children’s craft area, story time corner, pop-up bookstore by Politics & Prose, and more. In partnership with the Howard County Library System, Books in Bloom launched the library’s summer reading program, Summer @ Your Library, and included activities for children and adults alike.
144 Activities in Town Square Park
The Anchorage Downtown Partnership, Ltd. adopted a new approach to increase the vitality, security and image of downtown, while showcasing one of downtown’s most overlooked assets: Town Square Park, a green space in the heart of downtown Anchorage. Focusing on how positive activities can organically move a space away from issues of crime, homelessness and drugs, Anchorage Downtown Partnership, Ltd. facilitated a new summer program designed to bring new energy to the park through space activation.
Fancy Animal Carnival
Five sculptures were installed in DowntownDC from May 4-Oct. 5, 2017. Each giant animal sculpture was adorned with Taiwanese symbols and motifs which created painted patterns that reflected folk culture and religion as well as the artist’s personal experiences and observations. The BID created an online walking tour of the animals, identifying each location via a map and designed an aesthetically- pleasing way to showcase the animals and offer details about each sculpture.
Downtown Movie Nights
The City of San Antonio established Downtown Movie Nights in 2014 to promote activation in public spaces. The free movie screenings are hosted throughout downtown within various cultural public spaces. At Travis Park and La Villita, the outdoor movies are accompanied by food trucks, themed giveaways, and pre-show programming, such as photo booths, art and educational activities for children, and special appearances from actors dressed as characters from the movie.
Madison Night Market
A late 2016 study of downtown retail, conducted by the City of Madison and the BID, entitled “Ensuring a Vibrant Downtown Retail Destination” encouraged retail pop-ups, shop-around promotions and specialty markets as strategies to support a healthy retail district. As a direct and immediate effort to undertake strategies recommended from the study, the BID hosted the 1st ever Madison Night Markets.
I Scream! Kiosk
I Scream! is a Times Square pop-up kiosk that encourages people to speak up about social and political issues while enjoying a frozen treat. The Alliance and Urbanspace partnered with New York-based, Vendy Award-winning ice cream shop Ice & Vice to offer flavors like “Freeze Global Warming”, “The Full Scoop” and “Justice is Sweet.” 5% of total profits are donated directly to a rotating list of local and national nonprofits including Habitat for Humanity, Project HOPE and Harlem Grown.
Bicycle Roadside Assistance Program
The Hartford Business Improvement District’s (HBID) free on-site bicycle roadside assistance program is the first of its kind in the nation. HBID Ambassadors will fix a flat, inflate a tire, replace a tube, reattach a slipped chain or tighten up loose bolts, free of charge, anywhere in our District. This program, designed to support cyclists and foster an increase in bicycle commuting, received international attention with news stories running in outlets across the US and Canada.
To Outsource or Not to Outsource: How to Monetize Events
Does your organization produce numerous events? Is it labor intensive and are you asking yourself should we be doing these events in house or outsource to a vendor? Attend this session and learn from practitioners with different perspectives on why they do events in house and/or outsource.
The Business of Winter
How are winters in Tampa, Florida and Winnipeg, Canada the same? As you can imagine, Winnipeg is very cold in the winter and they have been very successful in activating the Red and Assiniboine Rivers and The Forks Marketplace during a time of year when everyone likes to hibernate. Downtown Tampa, decided to take promoting winter with a twist! This presentation shares creative holiday event ideas for warm and cold climates!