As Artscape opens Friday for its 40th year, Baltimore’s famous outdoor arts festival is about to hit the “reset” button as organizers pivot from pandemic upheaval to plans for a resurgence in attendance and economic activity.
“We haven’t had a full, three-day festival since 2019,” said Tonya Miller Hall, the mayor’s senior advisor for arts and culture and a BOPA board member. “This is our first chance to see how Artscape truly performs.”
The festival’s budget this year is about $1.1 million — a sum that has remained unchanged for roughly two decades — with about $600,000 coming from corporate support. The remainder is a mix of city, state and federal dollars.
The 44,000 visitors who attended the 2023 festival was just a fraction of the estimated 350,000 people who participated pre-pandemic, and less than 3% of the 1.5 million visitors during Artscape’s heyday in the 1990s, when Baltimore played host to such musical superstars as Aretha Franklin, Joan Baez and Patti LaBelle.
At that time, it seemed as though Artscape, widely described as the largest free public arts festival in the U.S., was unstoppable — and then along came a global pandemic, a year-long bout of controversy and mismanagement, After Artscape 2023 finally reopened, Tropical Storm Ophelia followed, which forced the cancellation of all activities for Saturday, the festival’s longest day.
Though no hurricanes are on the horizon for this year’s festival, Artscape 2024 is shaping up to be hot, steamy — and very likely rainy, with high temperatures in the mid to upper 90s and a 50-70% chance of thunderstorms on all three days.
“We’re in active negotiations with the rain gods,” joked Rachel Graham, chief executive officer of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, the quasi-governmental agency that mounts Artscape and other public city celebrations.
Graham said she has set goals for Artscape’s performance appropriate for a rebuilding phase.
“If we hit 150,000 visitors this year, I will be really happy,” she said.
Likewise, she is aiming for an economic impact “somewhere in the middle” of the $12 million generated by the shortened, 2023 Artscape and the pre-pandemic high of $28.5 million.
“In the future, I definitely want to eclipse $29 million,” she said.
While the city has established specific financial goals for BOPA (the agency is expected to generate $256 million in economic impact, and a return of $110 for every city dollar spent), Hall said the city has not set targets for individual festivals such as Artscape.
“We’re not dictating a dollar goal for the festival,” she said. “This year is the restart, a test to see what the economic impact of Artscape on Baltimore can actually be.”
A study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that one in every four U.S. adults, or 55 million people, attended at least one of the more than 1,400 arts festivals in the U.S. in 2008. Some of those festivals have been around since the 1960s, and they have a demographic profile that is the envy of performing arts groups nationwide.
“By gender and racial/ethnic composition, festival audiences resemble the general population as described by U.S. Census figures,” the report found.
Darius Irani, the chief economist for Towson University’s Regional Economic Studies Institute, said that arts festivals sprang up nationwide in the 1980s, a time when urban centers were in decline and many middle-class Americans were fleeing cities for the suburbs.
Festivals, like Artscape which debuted June 11, 1982, were perceived as a way to lure people downtown.
“Baltimore was a very challenged city,” Irani said, “with a high crime rate and declining population. Arts festivals were seen as a way to reinvigorate and shed a positive light on cities struggling with demographic change.”
The Economic Studies Institute prepares analyses of fiscal and policy impact for stage agencies, and Irani said that out-of-state visitors to Artscape will spend on average between $175 and $250. Every dollar they spend will generate an average of $2.10 in gross domestic support.
What’s more, every vendor, electrician, food service worker and artist at Artscape will likely support two additional jobs statewide, and Irani said that a third of the supported jobs would be considered new jobs.
In addition, Irani said, over the years the arts festival has acquired a unique local flavor.
“You couldn’t take Artscape and put it into another city,” he said. “It wouldn’t have the roots and flavor of Baltimore.”
Artscape’s 40th edition will feature 100 artists in the popular Artists’ Market, more than 50 food and beverage vendors, and three entertainment stages featuring more than 40 acts from hip-hop to country.
In a nod to the early 1980s, the marquee acts will be “Queen of Funk” Chaka Khan and the acclaimed drummer and percussionist Sheila E.
New this year will be “The Git-Down Series,” or after-hours programming, as well as a two-day project organized by the community group West Baltimore United about the controversial “Highway to Nowhere.”
Festivalgoers can expect to find nods to Artscape’s early days in tributes to Baltimore House Music, and to the MacArthur Award-winning artist Joyce J. Scott, who exhibited at the first Artscape in 1982.
The festival provided artists with an important income stream even 40 years ago — and it continues today.
Shawn Theron said he counts on the yearly three-day extravaganza to supply as much as a third of his annual income.
“Artscape is typically my biggest event of the year,” said Theron, who creates colorful “orb paintings” on recycled wood, house parts and other found materials. “I work for months beforehand to get ready for it.”
Artscape organizers also asked the public to share their favorite festival memories.
One response came from Lisa LaPrade, director of recreational programming for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, who wrote about the 2023 festival, which included a display of artwork by imprisoned youth.
“Every piece sold,” LaPrade wrote. “Our youth didn’t participate in it for the money. It gave them such a sense of pride, and it is something they will never forget.”