Cotton District Arts Festival aiming for fall date
The Cotton District is the holds the biggest arts festival every April that Starkville has to offer. But for this year, those looking forward to it can anticipate for this festival to come at a later date.
The Starkville Area Arts Council announced on Thursday
that they are working with the city, the Greater Starkville Development Partnership, and Mississippi State University to set a fall date for the 2021 Cotton District Arts Festival.
SAAC President John Bateman said they are currently aiming to have the festival on Saturday, October 2.
“We made that decision back when other festivals were cancelling and postponing; we just didn’t know what the future held for large-outdoor events with all of the public health concerns,” said Bateman. “The committee and the board met, and the decision was to try it in the fall and to collaborate with the city, the Partnership and the university. That way, instead of scheduling something in the spring with all of the uncertainty, we just have it in the fall so that we, at least, have a better of shot of knowing we could do it. The anticipation is that, by then, any sort of public health concerns have died down and more vaccines have rolled out.”
Bateman said that there were a few factors that went
into scheduling the CDA Festival until later in the year.
“Last year, we explored setting a date and a backup date in case we needed to postpone, and we went into that before the pandemic began; but we found that postponing it a month at a time just turned ridiculous, so what we realized for this year was to just further it out,” said Bateman. “We coordinated with Double Decker to make sure that if they move that we don’t conflict with them. We also felt like October would be cool enough and not as smoldering. We are excited about it because with the spring weather being so unpredictable and the tornadoes from two years ago, we really want to have a wonderful festival and we thought that this date will give us a good chance for this year.”
The SAAC also strategically planned this year’s festival to be on the Saturday where the Mississippi State football team will be on the road to play Texas A&M.
Bateman also said having this year’s festival on a weekend without MSU football in town is really good for vendors since that makes it much easier for them to get into hotels and it is also good for MSU student volunteers since there will not be a football game for them to go to, unless they make the drive to College Station, Texas for the weekend.
The 2021 Cotton District Arts Festival is scheduled for Saturday, October 2 with a showcase of incredible art, music, and food.