Annual Arts & Culture Series
Proudly Sponsored by: Hancock Partners, Town of Hancock & Delaware County
Located at the Hancock Town Square 20 E Main Street (May 2023 - October 2023)
The annual Summer Nights Live outdoor concert series is hosted in the Hancock Town Square each year. The Town Square will also be the host of the 2023 programming season, and the Capitol Theater on East Front Street will be used as our inclement weather option. We are now proudly celebrating our sixth season of the Summer Nights Live program, which proudly provides free cultural arts performances and live music each month. The events have traditionally run from May to August, however, due to popular demand we have expanded the program to be each week, vs once a month. This year we are starting off our season with Blues, Brews & BBQ on Memorial Day Weekend, and extending our season to October. This is being done to ensure more regional tourists can enjoy the showcase and better plan their outings with more flexibility all through the year.
The 2023 season will be a mix of unique and exciting artists, sculpture exhibitions, Art Performances, Musical Artists and Arts & Crafts Fair with our Farmer’s Market each week as well as the local Art Walk and new county-wide River Road & Rail Art Trail. We are proud to curate from a number of culturally diverse arts programming options, which include art exhibitions, teen nights, and musical performances. Thoughtful consideration is given to creating an immersive and memorable encounter with artists during each presentation. We want the tourists to remember what town/region that they are in, and to come back to Delaware County and Hancock more often. Crowds will want to be outdoors and shopping this year more than ever, and we want to be ready to service their needs and have vendors ready with products and services that meet the level of demand.
As always, the intent is to give preference to artists who can enhance the community's global knowledge, with different styles of music and artistic performances that speak to a broader audience of tourists. In previous years we featured Asian national dance, Mongolian throat singing, Native American tribal dance et al. As such, we continue to cultivate and promote the production of original interactive works and hope this year to feature augmented reality technology onsite during the performance events, to better engage with tourists, track the number of participants and engage the public in new and exciting ways. The intent of the events is to both expose the local community to new cultural and artistic experiences, as well as increase and extend the current tourism season during the summer and fall months in Delaware County and specifically Hancock.
These critical events also serve as a local economic incubator that bolsters local businesses, by bringing more than 1,200 tourists onto our main street and throughout the town during the summer season. The much needed sales and tourism dollars flow during those events, helping to keep our seasonal businesses alive during the winter months and able to operate the following year.
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