MainStreet Cleveland and the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce Tourism Department are teaming up again to give the residents of Cleveland and Bradley County, and visitors to the area, live music at the Friday Festivals. This year the summer concert series will be held every Friday in June in downtown Cleveland on the Courthouse Square. The festival series begins on June 5 ... (click for more)

Rodney Van Valkenburg, who began his career at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre, has come full circle after a 19-year tenure at ArtsBuild and will be the new executive director of CTC. An arts leader and enthusiastic cheerleader for the local arts community, Mr. Van Valkenburg is currently vice president of ArtsBuild, where he has focused his work on arts advocacy, expanded arts ... (click for more)

Governor Bill Lee’s administration Thursday outlined new spending plans for state government that reflect significant revenue reductions due to the economic impact of COVID-19. Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Butch Eley presented state lawmakers with the revised budget plans for the current fiscal year, as well as FY 2020-21, which begins July 1, and ... (click for more)

Friends of the Festival, the nonprofit organization behind Chattanooga’s premier music festival Riverbend, has made the decision to cancel this year’s event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Friends of the Festival is unveiling new plans to continue to deliver music to the city’s riverfront in light of the new realities brought on by the pandemic. In what would have ... (click for more)

Since its inception, Friends of the Festival seemed bound and determined to make Riverbend a national event, ignoring the opinions of many Chattanoogans. Riverbend started as a local event drawing on the tastes and desires of local citizens yet has devolved into an outrageously expensive, super-crowded two-week-long free-for-all. Riverbend has drastically deviated from its original ... (click for more)

By ordinary standards it might be best described as one of life’s worst 1-2 punches, a pair of hard, personal blows that drop you to your knees. True, each devastating blow was uncommonly back to back. But, no, when I learned Wednesday morning that college football icon Johnny Majors had died just some 48 hours after another legend, Auburn’s Pat Dye, it was as though I’d been hit ... (click for more)