Adams Morgan Day 2018
Leader
Kara Davis
Location
18th St and Columbia Rd NW Washington, DC 20009
About the project
Adams Morgan invites you to support and join us to celebrate the 40th anniversary Adams Morgan Day, the longest-running annual neighborhood festival in Washington DC. From its humble beginnings in the 1970s, Adams Morgan Day grew into one of the nation’s largest street festivals. In 2015, a small group of Adams Morgan residents and small-business owners stepped in to take up where the previous organizers left off. We had to start from scratch with fundraising, and threw a smaller festival for the first two years. Last year, we closed 18th street again, bringing back vendors and more music. We're confident that we can do that again with your help, and now that Marie Reed and Unity Park Renovations are complete, we might just be able to expand our footprint a bit!
To close the street, we need to raise a total of $50,000 to cover the event this year. Most of this will go to city services, emergency services, permits and the like, to keep everyone safe and happy. We also want to make the event FUN! We need funds to pay for sound equipment, bands, and kids’ art supplies to bring it all together. Donations, local business involvement, and volunteer time are all very much needed, and we’ve seen an enthusiastic response from new volunteers thus far!
Our goal is to make our 40th anniversary, Adams Morgan Day 2018, a day to celebrate the great things our neighborhood offers. The public is invited to every organizational meeting we hold, so join us! We’ve forged new community ties as we prepare to stage our “neighborhood showcase.” With everyone’s help, we hope to build Adams Morgan Day into a bigger festival again this year, but with a truly local focus and total transparency.
The Steps
- Permits, insurance, and licensing
- Street Closure fees
- Recruitment of sponsors, local businesses and vendors
- Design, printing and distribution of flyers, banners and t-shirts
- Domain registration and web-hosting
- Advertising
- Sound equipment and stage rental fees
- DC emergency and law-enforcement presence
Why we‘re doing it
The Adams Morgan neighborhood is proud of its ethnic diversity, multi-cultural small businesses, and artistic offerings. Like other desirable inner-city neighborhoods, Adams Morgan faces economic-development pressures that threaten to displace its diverse population, as well as its small-scale businesses. These economic pressures sow controversy and division within any neighborhood.
Adams Morgan Day is a 40-year-old tradition that we are proud to sustain and don’t want to lose. We want to rebuild it as an event that brings the whole neighborhood together. We are building relationships and trust between our new and long-term residents, and between the residential and business communities.