On May 23, the inaugural CultureWorks Festival will take place across multiple venues downtown. It’s the first festival of its kind in the city in decades, according to Jocquelyn Boone, the city’s chief creative economy officer and lead of Creative Greensboro.
“As far as a platform just dedicated to arts and culture, I’m not sure we’ve done it in this way,” Boone said.
On Saturday, the festival will feature multiple forms of art from visual and fashion to music and dancing—even aerialists and jugglers.
“We feel like the creative economy here in Greensboro is strong,” Boone said. “This is a one-day showcase of the best of what we have.”
One of the festival’s main highlights will be its emphasis on fashion. Two shows will feature local designers throughout the day, and most notably, an artist talk with Ruth Carter, the renowned designer who has been nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two for Best Costume Design in 2019 and 2023.
The idea to highlight fashion, Boone said, came from Sasha Woods, a local designer and one of the city’s cultural arts commissioners.
“She said, ‘Jackie, I love the work of Creative Greensboro, but you don’t support designers,’” Boone said. “It was a lightbulb moment.”
The theme of the inaugural festival is worldbuilding, which made Boone immediately think of Carter, the most-nominated Black woman in Oscar history.
“She was the perfect pairing for this kind of event,” Boone said.
Carter will speak with Boone on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Van Dyke Performance Space. While the event is free, seats are limited, so registration is required.
Boone, who grew up in New York, has worked in multiple large cities throughout her career. She taught in Charlotte and studied film at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She worked in the nonprofit sector until she moved to Baltimore, where she was director of the city’s arts council. Living in these different places allowed Boonehow to fold arts and culture into a city’s identity.
“I love working with the community and providing artists and creatives with resources and the business side of how to do their craft,” Boone said.
When the creative economy position came up in Greensboro, Boone saw it as an opportunity to bring what she’s learned to the city.
“I think systems need to be revamped,” she said. “You need an inside advocate. I wanted to work from the inside.”
That means making sure creatives in the city don’t just feel like an afterthought but are utilized as part of Greensboro’s future planning.
“If you embed policies that include art and culture from a city perspective, you’re not talking to creatives at the tail end, you’re talking to them in the beginning,” Boone said. “It’s a sector that needs to be talked to and respected.”
The arts aren’t just for entertainment, Boone said. Artists are creative by nature and can help brainstorm solutions to systemic problems.
As part of the city’s neighborhood arts program, Boone wants to connect creatives to other departments to improve blighted areas in Greensboro. She imagines building art and light installations, or hosting pop-up music festivals.
“It’s about asking, ‘How can we use art and culture to address those concerns?’” Boone said.
While the city has fostered a strong arts and culture community for years, Boone said, she’s received a lot of great feedback from this new city council on her vision and long-term strategy. She’s currently working with councilmember Irving Allen on how to implement the city’s cultural master plan.
“This council is invested in art and culture, and they are excited about infusing it into our planning,” Boone said.
The goal isn’t necessarily to copy what other cities are doing, Boone said. It’s to capitalize on what makes Greensboro special.
“I think there are so many pockets here,” she said. “If you want an eclectic experience, a soulful experience, if you want high-end visual art, or if you want something more niche, if you want ballet, modern dance, pottery, that’s all here for you. I feel there is something for everybody.”
Accessibility is also core to Boone’s mission.
Earlier this month, to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the city highlighted Asian vendors and exhibited different performance groups for First Friday. In September, it is featuring deaf artists for Deaf Awareness Month.
“If you program directly for them, they will come,” Boone said.
The city also launched the Culture Pass Program last year, which allows people to request two free passes per month for various cultural experiences. This year, it’s offering more than 150 passes from May to September.
With CultureWorks this weekend, Boone hopes people come out to see for themselves the multitude of talent that exists in the city. They don’t need to go to Winston-Salem, Charlotte, or Raleigh to get their artistic fix.
“This is a creative city,” Boone said. “It’s our job to tell the world and keep shouting proudly about it.”