Inman Park Fest is an annual celebration beginning on April 25 as Atlanta’s largest all-volunteer festival. It is a way for students to gain community service hours or give back to their community, whilst also being a platform for music performers and artists to showcase their work.
Volunteer Susan Crawley, a resident in Inman Park for over 40 years who has spent many years working on the Festival Committee, said the festival started as an effort to raise money for the neighborhood, and has been a tradition ever since.
“In 1972, the first Inman Park Festival was vital for pioneers who were trying to save this formerly lovely but run-down area to introduce it to mortgage lenders, insurers, politicians, and potential home buyers,” Crawley said. “Fifty-four years later, our festival is the glue that holds us together. For all the beauty of Inman Park, it is the intense and proud sense of community that makes this neighborhood most special.”
Music Committee volunteer Jim Emshoff said Inman Park Fest is widely known for bringing the community together through volunteer roles, good music, and Atlanta culture.
“Inman Park Fest is known throughout Atlanta as one of the city’s best festivals, so it brings together not only the local community, but creates a city-wide community,” Emshoff said. “It provides financial support for many of the neighborhood’s initiatives and helps to give IP visibility and an identity throughout the city.”
Crawley said the festival is able to support local artists, vendors, and businesses by having space for a wide variety of booths and incorporating other activities including the tour of homes and an art contest.
“The Inman Park Festival provides booth space for non-profits, allowing them to increase their public exposure,” Crawley said. “The Street Market provides display and sales space for small or home-based businesses of all kinds. The Arts & Crafts market provides booth space for select artists and craftspeople, whose work is selected beforehand by a jury. Finally, each year, a contest is held for that year’s Festival theme art, which will appear on t-shirts for staff and festivalgoers, the cover of the ticket booklet for the Tour of Homes, and promotional materials for the festival. The winning artist also receives a cash award, as do the winners of five prizes for entries in the juried Arts & Crafts market.”
Emshoff said the committee balances tradition and novelty by having the same parades and events, but rotating other elements including the bands.
“From a music standpoint, we never hire the same bands two years in a row,” Eimshoff said. “And every year we have quite a few bands that have never played Inman Park Fest before. But we still make use of many strong traditions, such as the Saturday parade, and the Tour of Homes.”
Crawley said while most festivals require paid workers, the Inman Park Festival relies solely on volunteers from throughout the community.
“Unlike most events of its size, the Inman Park Festival has no paid workers,” Crawley said, “not even a professional director, making it, to the best of our knowledge, the largest all-volunteer festival in the state and possibly the Southeast.”
The festival wouldn’t be functioning without the volunteers and their support. Crawley said the volunteers begin preparation early in the year and organize all the bits and pieces so the event can run smoothly.
“Volunteers are the Inman Park Festival,” Crawley said. “Every role at the festival is filled by volunteers, from the Festival Chairs to the neighbors who clean up the streets at the end of the event. Starting in August, neighborhood volunteers step up to fill 43 sub-committees in
preparation for the festival the following April. Then, just before and during the weekend of the festival, almost a thousand volunteers turn out to pour beer, marshal the parade, staff and manage several parties and the children’s area, house-sit for the Tour of Homes, put out flags and signs, distribute and manage radios and golf carts, sell merchandise and house tour tickets, keep the water coolers full, pick up trash and a host of other vital jobs.
Among the returning vendors is Sushma Barakoti, founder of Sunov World, a social enterprise that sells handmade bags, scarves and toys crafted by a women’s group in Nepal. Originally from Nepal herself, Barakoti said the business is a way to stay connected to her home country while supporting artisans there.
“These are all handmade and hand-woven by a women’s group in Nepal,” Barakoti said. “It’s a social enterprise. These women transform their traditional art into income generation.”
Barakoti said this year marks her tenth at Inman Park Fest, and the loyalty of her customers is what keeps her coming back.
“I love the people, and I think the things that I sell, these are my customers,” Barakoti said. “I do have repeat customers. They come back year after year, bring their friends, buy gifts for their friends.”
Barakoti said Inman Park Fest is one of her favorite festivals to vend at because the family-friendly atmosphere brings in shoppers of all ages.
“Inman Park Festival is one of my favorites, and I sell the most,” Barakoti said. “I think these items that I sell appeal to the people here. I sell a lot of things that are for children and different age groups, but especially children, and there’s a lot of families here.”
Barakoti said she also believes the festival’s free admission is essential to keeping it accessible for everyone in the community.
“It should be free for people because that might be a hindrance for some,” Barakoti said.
Beyond the vendors, Inman Park Festival also provides attendees with a variety of local music talent. With 3 stages across 2 days, Inman Park Fest has its participants jamming out all weekend long.
Junior Caitlin Persily, who has attended the festival for years, said the mix of food, music and community is what brings her back.
“I’ve been coming since I was little, and it’s one of my favorite weekends of the year,” Persily said. “You can get good food, see live music and just walk around the neighborhood with friends. I don’t really know of anything else like it in Atlanta.”
Persily said she found one of her favorite local bands at the festival a couple of years ago.
“That’s the thing about the music here, you’ll catch bands you’ve never heard of and a lot of them are really good,” Persily said. “I found one of my favorite bands at Inman Park Fest two years ago, and now I try to see them whenever they play. You don’t really get that at bigger festivals.”
Vendors line the streets between sets, including Banh Mi Chi Em, an Atlanta-based Vietnamese sandwich shop that works as a popup vendor, selling only at festivals and events. Owner Chloe Song-My said the festival is one of her favorite events to work.
“It has a great energy. People are walking around with food in one hand, kind of moving along with the music,” Song-My said. “Banh mi works well for that because you can eat it while you walk. Nobody wants to sit down for a long meal when there’s a band playing down the street.”
Song-My said the music brings in a wide range of customers.
“We get families, college kids, people who’ve lived in Inman Park forever, people who only came for one specific band,” Song-My said. “The music gets them here, and then they smell the food; the hungry people make us successful.”
Song-My said working a festival run entirely by volunteers feels different from other events, and the atmosphere is what makes Inman Park Fest so special.
“You can tell people actually care,” Song-My said. “It’s not just somewhere to sell food. It feels like you’re part of the neighborhood for the weekend and every year people have been so welcoming; all the volunteers are always so excited to help me set up.”
With three stages, dozens of vendors and nearly a thousand volunteers keeping things moving, Inman Park Fest continues to draw Atlantans back to the neighborhood each spring.
“I think that’s what makes it special,” Song-My said. “It’s not really about the food or the music by themselves, it’s that people keep coming back for each other.”
