Performing and visual arts, which commanded a bigger role than ever at the Decatur Book Festival last year, will only grow in this year’s edition of the country’s largest independent book fest.
art|DBF, the alphabet-soup-like name for the arts-festival-within-the-book-festival that greeted 85,500 book lovers last year, is returning and will command additional Decatur Square real estate and will present more varied performances and art experiences Aug. 30-31.
“I was really pleased with how it turned out,” art|DBF curator Julie Delliquanti said of last year’s launch. “ Festival-goers “genuinely were very interested and like expanding the idea of storytelling to the visual arts and performing arts. It made sense to them.”
art|DBF is a different deal than the popular Decatur Arts Festival held over Memorial Day weekend, with its rows of artist-run booths. The Book Festival component presents a fall season sampler of the metro area’s arts groups and artists. It’s an opportunity for Atlantans to check out well-established and up-and-coming arts entities, and for those groups to reach what Delliquanti calls the city’s “most open and curious and generous and adventurous cultural consumers.”
This year, art|DBF shifts its center of gravity, with the main performances unfolding at Decatur High School’s Performing Arts Center, and the Atlanta PlanIt art|DBF Neighborhood (a tented area where nearly 40 groups will ply visitors with fall season information) spreading like a picnic blanket over horseshoe-shaped North McDonough Street in front of Eddie’s Attic. Music, storytelling and other arts and entertainment returns to the Decatur Community Bandstand, and visual art installations will surprise book fans here and there across the Square.
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