Mayor Kasim Reed recently called Atlanta the Cultural Capital of the Southeast, and we here at Matboard and More couldn’t agree more. This very weekend, Atlanta will be celebrating one of our many art festivals, the 81st Annual Dogwood Festival, downtown in Piedmont Park. Besides this, we have many other art festivals all throughout the year, including the Sweetwater 420 Festival, the Inman Park Festival, and the Candler Park festival. Beyond this, Atlanta also hosts a number of large conventions for the creative types, with Dragon Con being the largest. There are other such conventions throughout the year, along with many smaller arts festivals scattered around the city.
Atlanta has benefitted from this patronage, with a huge amount of money coming into the city from the many movies and television shows that film in the area. I myself have personally walked through areas used by The Walking Dead and Zombieland. The city is much less scary when filled with students and businesspeople.
Mayor Reed plans to continue this partnership by supporting smaller artistic endeavors, in the hopes that they too will be yet another part of what makes our city great. The Mammal Gallery and the Downtown Players Club have both played a part in revitalizing parts of the city that previously had needed little changes when used in the post apocalypse of The Walking Dead.
We here at Matboard and More are big believes in supporting the Arts. We are living proof of the economic benefit of the Arts, but it goes beyond that. Art of all kinds helps us appreciate and understand life. It can show us the type of people we want to be and type of world we want to live in. It help us think about problems and ideas in ways we had not before. It can help us understand ourselves and prepare us for the problems we all come to face in life. When we are at our worst, art can help remind us of the beauty and goodness in the world. As such, we fully support Mayor Reed’s efforts, and hope that the arts continue to grow, both here and around the country.
You can read more about Mayor Reed’s plans for downtown here.