Festival in the Park records

A. Grant Whitney was the man who started the Festival in the Park annual event. This festival takes place over the course of a weekend in mid-September each year and features artists and their work, performers, crafts, food, recreational activities and a wide variety of entertainment. The Mission Statement is: "Bring the community together through the arts." The purpose: True to the vision of its founder, the late A. Grant Whitney, the Festival is intended to provide something for everyone. The Festival, with an emphasis on diversity across all ages, races, and creeds, promotes professional and amateur visual and performing artists. Through community outreach, the Festival hosts many youth and educational organizations. Over the years, administration of the Fair was gradually taken over by Julie Whitney Austin, Grant Whitney's daughter. While the Festival itself is an autumn event (September), the Festival Board decided there should be something in the spring, an especially beautiful time of year in the Piedmont of North Carolina. In 2011, the Festival Board creaated a spring fine arts event known as the Kings Drive Art Walk. It is held in April along the Little Sugar Creek Greenway, a reclaimed natural waterway between East Morehead Street and Pearle Park Way Bridge along Kings Drive in Charlotte, NC. With a focus on fine and emerging artists, the spring festival on the beautiful and easily accessible venue quickly became a popular annual fine arts outing.