In just under six weeks, Sarasota will experience something that it never has before. Yes, the city that is home to Florida’s Cultural Coast™ has had art festivals before. The Ringling International Arts Festival was a beloved tradition. The Sarasota International Chalk Festival returns this November, larger and with more variance in its programming than ever before. The Sarasota Film Festival continues to live on.

But the people of Sarasota have yet to immerse themselves in the spectacle that is the upcoming Living Arts Festival. From November 10-17, the festival, produced by the non-profit Sarasota Rising, will engage nearly all of the area’s arts organizations in an effort to promote and cement Sarasota as the cultural hub of Florida’s Gulf Coast. “The idea was to make it as simple as possible. We don’t want to make organizations jump through hoops and produce something special for the festival. We want to support whatever an area arts organization’s mission is,” says Jeffery Kin, Executive Director of Sarasota Rising. “We want more people to walk through their lobbies, more butts in their seats, more people in the restaurants, more heads in beds. Really, we’ve realized, over the course of the two years, that we’re almost more like an arts movement. We’re more than a festival, more than a street fair, more than a kids art day, it's a movement of helping us all come together, celebrating who we are, what we are and enjoying what makes us so unique and different as a city.”

In its inaugural year, the Living Arts Festival will feature a bevy of produced events for attendees, special premieres of works from established organizations and even specially produced work by some of the organizations for the festival. The fun starts two days before the official opening of the festival, with a pre-festival “Living Arts Festival Fete” on Friday, November 8 and a family-focused free arts exhibition on November 9. The party officially kicks off on November 10, with the opening rooftop bash, “A World of the ARTS”, celebrating the global influences within the Sarasota art scene. That event is followed by “Our Embrace Reimagined”, a “super collaboration” between a number of local organizations, featuring a performance walking tour through Marie Selby Gardens’ Historic Spanish Point campus. “All Roads Lead to Venice” will highlight the plethora of arts organizations in the city of Venice and “Arts Roulette” will allow participants to spin the roulette wheel to win tickets to events of the festival’s participating organizations. The festival will close in the Circus Arts Conservatory’s (CAC) Sailor Circus Arena with “Sarasota Rising –Celebrating Our Youth”, a massive, highly orchestrated production from the CAC and Key Chorale that will feature performances from many of the participating organization’s youth programs.

The Living Arts Festival takes place November 10-17, 2024.