Free & Open to the Public!

Saturday, April 6, 2019 11AM-7PM

Sunday, April 7, 2019 12PM-6PM

The Ebb & Flow Festival is an annual conglomerate of visual art, film, music festivals, interactive media, and conferences that take place beginning in mid-March and culminate in a 2-day Arts Festival each April.  It began in 2017, as a reimagining of Fest for All, and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year.

The Ebb and Flow Festival Season is a synthesis of free festivals during the period of mid-March to mid-April, including the Third Street Songwriters Festival, Red Stick Digital Festival at LSU, Louisiana International Film Foundation’s FilmFest, Live After 5, the Young Entrepreneurs Academy Trade Show and Baton Rouge Blues Festival.

Throughout this Festival Season, community organizations will host events, as well, including the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum, LSU Museum of Art, Baton Rouge Concert Band, Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, The Water Institute of the Gulf, Télé-Louisiane, Bayou Cirque, Les Jeunes Artistes de Louisiana, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Baton Rouge Area Chamber, the Louisiana Office of Culture and Tourism, The Louisiana Division of the Arts, Visit Baton Rouge, Downtown Development District, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, LSU College of Art and Design, Southern University, Louisiana Arts & Science Museum, East Baton Rouge Parish Library, West Baton Rouge Parish Library, Livingston Parish Library, BREC, Old State Capitol, Knock Knock Children’s Museum and so many more, making the Ebb and Flow a city-wide arts collective. The season includes Ebb & Flow, a free, outdoor festival downtown on April 6th-7th. This 2-day festival will showcase arts organizations throughout our region, with interactive performances, arts demonstrations, and public art displays for our entire community to engage with the arts.

Inspired by Baton Rouge’s identity as the capital of Louisiana and its unique location on the on the Mississippi River, the Ebb & Flow Festival celebrates artists, expands cultural understanding, encourages critical discourse, transforms urban space, promotes the collective economic and ecological connection to water, and all things that ebb and flow.  

The Ebb & Flow Festival will educate and foster dialogue to increase understanding of natural and human aspects of water systems, ecology, and restoration in terms that are approachable for the public, including placemaking, storytelling, public art and interactive design. This arts and cultural approach is combined with the celebration of the diverse industry brought by the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River in balance with incentives for sustainable practices among festival vendors and partners.

The delta region and coastline of Louisiana is disproportionately vulnerable to land loss and flooding due to climate change. In addition to economic and ecological impacts, erosion and weather events threaten the loss of Louisiana’s cultural assets. These cultural assets may also provide a resource in the solution to this problem by humanizing the issue and providing a means to help the public understand and connect to water. According to a 2018 report by the US Water Alliance, “Artistic experiences often evoke a sensory and emotional response and have potential to help people see, hear, feel and even taste a unique water challenge, source, or process that would have otherwise been intangible.” Ebb & Flow Festival, with its thematic focus on water and location on the Mississippi River, is a setting to make these connections for people in Southeast Louisiana and on a national and international level.