Dogwood Festival challenges are a sign that change is needed
I haven’t been to the Atlanta Dogwood Festival since 2022.
The last time I attended, I was there in my capacity as a Girl Scout Troop leader, keeping a close eye on our girls who were stationed at the entry gates as they asked visitors for voluntary donations.
It was the first year post-pandemic that the festival had returned to its regular three-day programming in April, and even then, organizers made clear that ongoing financial strain was an existential threat.
The search for new revenue streams included a request to the city to implement a $5 admission fee that apparently did not materialize. Instead, groups who offered to work the gates and ask for donations could earn 15% of the money they collected during their shift.
Our Girl Scout troop was planning a trip to Savannah, and their goal was to raise money to help cover the cost.
After that year, I assumed, wrongly, that the financial challenges of Atlanta’s Dogwood Festival had eased.
Last week, festival organizers announced that a 25% budget shortfall had resulted in the need to raise $250,000 by Nov. 1 for the festival to run as planned on April 10-12, 2026.
Organizers have cited financial losses from 2020, combined with reduced funding and high production costs for things like equipment rentals and security services, among the reasons for the shortfall.
Efforts to generate additional sources of funding over the years, such as introducing a 5K run, VIP ticketing, rides, and merchandise sales, have not offset increasing costs and lost sponsorship dollars. The festival has not been profitable since the pandemic.
Last year, it operated with a deficit of just under $75,000, according to recent reporting by Atlanta Journal-Constitution entertainment reporter, Rodney Ho.
People have a lot of thoughts about why this festival, the longest-running arts festival in Atlanta, is struggling years after the pandemic.
Some commenters in online forums suggested financial mismanagement was the problem and called for a financial audit. Other residents pointed to an overall decline in support for nonprofit organizations that serve the public interest.
But the threat to the festival could also be an indicator that this festival needs to evolve once again, as it has always done in 90 years since it began in 1936 as a weeklong celebration of Atlanta’s Dogwood trees.
Introduced during the tail end of the Great Depression, the Atlanta Dogwood Festival galvanized people in certain circles of Atlanta to show the world the beauty of Atlanta’s blooming Dogwood trees. The festival continued for five years before World War II brought it to an untimely end.
For more than 20 years, the Atlanta Dogwood Festival was absent from the cultural scene, until 1964 when it was revived by the Women’s Chamber of Commerce of Atlanta. Since then, the festival has continued to shift and change.
It was a weeklong celebration, then a monthlong celebration before landing at the current three-day weekend celebration.
It was held at multiple venues across the city, stretching from Buckhead to Midtown, before settling in at Piedmont Park.
It has survived a drought, and hopefully, it will also survive a pandemic.
The lesson to take from all of this is that the festival has continued for so long because it has changed. That doesn’t necessarily mean adding or taking away; it just means different.
Are we willing to consider a Dogwood Festival that is different from what it has been for the last 25 years if the only other option is … no Dogwood Festival at all?
Two days after the Dogwood Festival announced its financial struggle and issued a plea to the public for support, employees of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution learned our newspaper will be moving to a digital-only model at the end of this year.
It was hard to process that a 150-year-old tradition would be ending, but I thought about what it would be like for that tradition to really end — for there to be no local newspaper at all in the city. That thought is helping me embrace the idea that this is what change must look like for now.
I don’t know what a significant change might look like for the Dogwood Festival, a free event that has survived primarily on vendor fees and sponsorships. But I have to believe that much like the leadership at the AJC, festival organizers are looking at the landscape of the future and considering other ways to meet the desires of the 200,000 visitors and more than 250 artists who participate in the festival each year.
In a 2023 open letter from the metro Atlanta arts community, the authors called COVID-19 the biggest disruption to the American arts sector and the most destructive since the Great Depression.
The Atlanta Dogwood Festival was conceived and launched during the Great Depression, offering a spirit of optimism to the city. It disappeared for two decades, was revitalized, and has been reimagined many times over the past 60 years.
And in this moment, in the havoc left by the pandemic, the Atlanta Dogwood Festival must be reborn once again.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
About the Author
Nedra Rhone is a lifestyle columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution where she has been a reporter since 2006. A graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism, she enjoys writing about the people, places and events that define metro Atlanta.
