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2012 Festival Hours: Friday, May 18: 3 pm - 10 pmSaturday, May 19: 10 am - 10:30 pmSunday, May 20: Noon - 5 pmSee a complete schedule of events and the band lineup at lowertownamf.com. Hear a LIVE Broadcast from LowerTown on WKMS!May 18th from 7 - 10 p.m.Tracy Ross hosts a live broadcast from the LowerTown Arts and Music Festival in Paducah.

Terra: Annual Lower Town Arts Festival a Success

Organizers say the weekend’s Paducah Lower Town Arts and Music Festival was another success.

A double-digit percentage increase in visitors, several new events and some tweaks to the regular line-up of events led to what co-director Michael Terra called a tremendous weekend of festival food and fun.

Some 14,000-16,000 visitors swarmed Paducah’s lower-town district for new events like the “Top Potter” event, which featured nearly a dozen local artists in a timed competition.

Terra said organizers also re-located the children’s pavilion and featured two full-time, live music stages. Changes like those were good guesses, he says.

“People were happy and well-fed and there were smiles – a lot of smiles in Paducah,” he said.

Terra says the annual festival is an important time for the community and region because it keeps a marginal economic impact entirely local and allows area residents to get a feel for the artistic talent the region holds.

A double-digit percentage increase in visitors, several new events and some tweaks to the regular line-up of events led to what Terra calls a tremendous economic impact and the opportunity to show off local talent.

Earned became money locally spent, which Terra said is what makes events like these so important for communities like Paducah.

In fact, this year’s festival featured almost 100 different vendors selling food and other products or advocating local non-profit organizations.

“I think that the biggest impact that’s felt pretty much for the next three months is economic,” Terra said. “Because we source everything from our region – everything from the beer, to the soda to the Porta-Potty. When people come to a festival and spend money, all of the money that they just spent, that they earned here in the region, gets spent again in the region; it’s not exported.”

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