By CHARLIE POGACAR
SPECIAL TO THE News of Orange County
Think again.
Last Fridays & the Art Walk, hosted by the Hillsborough Arts Council, continues to be one of the town’s premier events. This year’s series opened on Friday, March 31, and will run through November—the next event is scheduled for Friday, April 28. The fan-favorite Makers Markets are back this year as well, but will start back up in May.
Not only has Last Fridays & the Art Walk evolved a great deal over the past couple of years, but it still continues to push the envelope—all while maintaining the things that have always made Last Fridays & the Art walk special. Building on the success of the 2021 and 2022 events, this year there will be more musicians playing, more poets performing, and more artists showcasing their work all across downtown. For example, the Art Walk has grown its participating venues from 15 local businesses to 21—Yep Roc Records, Carlisle & Linny Vintage Jewelry, Delight Studio, and the Ballard Agency are the new additions in 2023.
“When we arrived here at the Hillsborough Arts Council, we were aware of the fact that we were inheriting a beloved program,” said Mollie Thomas, Executive Director of the Hillsborough Arts Council. “We wanted to handle it very carefully knowing so many people had put in a lot of work over the years to make it what it was. At the same time, we saw a great opportunity to restructure and grow it.”
In many ways, the event was forced to restructure due to social distancing restrictions imposed after the entire slate of 2020 events was canceled. Instead of being a deterrent, that was treated as an opportunity to increase the impact of Last Fridays and expand the scope of the Art Walk. Thomas and Iva Beveridge, Programs & Marketing Director for the Hillsborough Arts Council, are the duo that have been the driving force behind the events since fall of 2021—they were promoted from contractors to their current and created positions when the arts council decided to invest more in staff and operations in order to grow its programs.
“Last Fridays is this beautiful proof point of what can happen when people come together with a shared passion for art and fun,” Beveridge said. “Particularly what manifested coming out of the pandemic, where prioritization was given to the Art Walk because it’s a perk for local businesses and also for the artists who get to display their work.”
One of the key takeaways from the 2022 series of events was that themed events can help differentiate Last Fridays from month to month. For example, the annual Last Fridays event each October has always held a Halloween theme—that’s not going anywhere. But for the first time, last August’s Last Fridays event had a “back-to-school” theme, where artists and musicians with an educational bent were prioritized.
For example, the August 2022 event hosted Ballet Orgulloy Almalatina, a Latino troupe with dancers of all ages that fit in nicely with the educational theme—an appearance that was organized by Donn Young and the Skylight Gallery at the Hillsborough Artist Cooperative. That month’s event also welcomed School of Rock, a music lessons outfit based in Chapel Hill. Donations were collected through Hillsborough Arts Council’s ArtCycle program to give local students and teachers back-to-school supplies they would require for the upcoming school year. The drive collected 500 pounds of school supplies.
“That’s a huge part of what we’re leaning into this year,” Thomas said. “We will definitely be doing the back-to-school and arts education theme in August again. We are finding some other strong themes to create cohesion and some throughlines between a month’s events, but still with the flexibility that it may change or evolve year-to-year.”
Back for another year, too, is the Living Arts Collective, an organization out of Durham—but founded by native Hillsboroughan Aubrey Griffith-Zill—that leads a Drum Circle (6 to 7 p.m. each Last Fridays) and a Dancewave (7:30 to 9 p.m. each last Fridays) in River Park. The events are geared toward all ages and varying ability levels. Thomas and Beveridge describe both the Drum Circle and the Dancewave as “magnetic” experiences that provide an improvisational element that may as well be a metaphor for what Last Fridays & the Art Walk have become.
In other words: no two Drum Circles, or Dancewaves, are truly alike. That’s now true of Last Fridays & the Art Walk as well.
“We don’t want the event to feel predictable,” Thomas said. “We want it to feel like, ‘I need to be there this month, because who knows what I’m going to find.’ We want Last Fridays to be an event where everyone can reliably have a good time—for that to happen, each one has to be exciting and unique enough that you don’t know what you’ll discover.”
The Hillsborough Arts Council is currently looking for volunteer leaders to help with Last Fridays & the Art Walk events. Those interested are encouraged to fill out an application on the Hillsborough Arts Council’s website.
