Each day of ELEVATE Atlanta 2025, happening Oct. 10–12, plays out like a love song to a different corner of the city’s creative map. The festival’s theme, “Rooted & Rising,” runs through every performance, pop-up, and gathering, serving as a call to celebrate the neighborhoods and spaces that continue to shape Atlanta’s creative pulse.
In a city that’s always building something new, ELEVATE lingers on what’s already here. It turns bridges into stages, hair shows into communal rituals, and everyday streets into marketplaces. Over three days, the city’s free public arts festival reframes Atlanta as a network of stories that celebrate how creativity, culture, and care can keep pace with change.
This year’s ELEVATE curators— Courtney Brooks, Melissa “Phyllis Iller” Alexander, and SLW & Steady Productions—approach that question from three distinct vantage points: atop the Carrie Steele Bridge, inside Underground Atlanta, and on the streets of Westview. Together, they offer a grounded portrait of a city still defining what it means to rise without losing its roots.
“We’re elevating collectively and being healed through the arts.”
ELEVATE 2025 co-curator courtney brooks
Day One: Steele Fresh
The festival opens Friday, Oct. 10, with ‘Steele Fresh, a multi-sensory takeover of the Carrie Steele Bridge led by multidisciplinary artist Courtney Brooks. The evening begins with a group meditation, followed by a fashion show featuring local designers such as Everythang Dope, Wild Seed Butik, Abeille Creations, 8011, and Selara Regalia, before wrapping with a live performance by Tiffany Goode & The Goode Stuff Experience.
Brooks, the inaugural Curator-in-Residence for Art on the Atlanta Beltline, built her curatorial voice around the idea that art belongs in public space. With ‘Steele Fresh,’ she’s applying that same philosophy to new terrain by turning a downtown bridge into a stage for fashion, music, and shared reflection. “The title, ‘Rooted & Rising,’ says it all,” Brooks explains. “We’re elevating collectively and being healed through the arts. I want people to let go of their worries, to see the beauty in themselves and in each other.”
” …attendees should leave ELEVATE this year feeling like they’ve been wrapped in a warm hug from an old friend.”
ELEVATE 2025 Co-Curator Melissa Alexander
Day Two: The Culture Comb-Out
Saturday’s activation opens with group wellness and intention-setting, then expands into a marketplace of Atlanta-based stylists, beauticians, and small businesses. By evening, it transforms into the ‘Crown Classic Hair Showdown’, a ’90s-inspired hair show with seven stylists and their models reinterpreting the era’s defining styles. Curated by photographer and cultural documentarian Melissa “Phyllis Iller” Alexander, the day reflects her photographic practice—close, personal, and unguarded, with a focus on vulnerability, connection, and care within community.
“I’ve maintained that attendees should leave ELEVATE this year feeling like they’ve been wrapped in a warm hug from an old friend,” Alexander says. “Success looks like folks finding kindred spirits,” she continues. “It looks like everyone is feeling heard, seen, and affirmed.”
“We want people to know their neighbors … To share resources. To build something lasting.”
ELevate 2025 co-curator stephen wilkins
Day Three: Welcome to the Westside
ELEVATE 2025 closes with ‘Welcome to the Westside,’ curated by the creative team of Stephen Wilkins and Jordan Neal, a.k.a SLW & Steady Productions.
Building on years of involvement in Atlanta’s DIY and underground arts scene, the pair planned a day shaped by the people who already define Westview. Their program brings together neighborhood businesses and artists they’ve worked alongside through monthly markets this year, places such as Westview Makers and BBQ56, to highlight the slower, more sustainable growth that can come when residents own the narrative. “Atlanta is always under construction,” Wilkins says. “We’re just trying to remind folks what’s already here.”
That ethos—slower, more sustainable, rooted in community—threads through every part of the day’s lineup. “We want people to know their neighbors,” Wilkins adds. “To share resources. To build something lasting.”
Read more:
• ELEVATE: 50 Years of Culture to showcase visual and performing art Sept. 20-Oct. 13
• CBrooks gallery opens in southeast Atlanta, showcases Black art
A City in Motion
Across bridges, boulevards, and beauty shop chairs, ‘Rooted & Rising’ promises to be a portrait of Atlanta in motion, amplifying what happens when creativity begins where community already exists.
Through Brooks’s open-air runway, Alexander’s hair-as-heritage showcase, and SLW & Steady’s street-level marketplace, ELEVATE 2025 invites the city to see itself anew. Each day doubles as a love song and a reminder: Atlanta’s art scene doesn’t just reflect the city—it keeps it alive.