Masters Weekend marked the launch of a new, low-cost project to keep shopping local in Augusta.
The Downtown Economic Boost, which kicked off on Saturday and went through Sunday, is a grass-roots initiative urging shoppers to blitz downtown small businesses with their patronage through Masters week.
“The main goal, the north star, is supporting our small businesses economically right now, because they need it,” said community advocate Debra Estep, who organized the event.
The boost event this year serves as a kind of prototype for a grassroots festival called Align Augusta. Designed to promote business downtown while relying less on benefactor reliance, Align Augusta would be funded by small donations received throughout the year, and then coordinated through collaboration between nonprofits, artists, entertainers and small business owners.
Hurricane Helene and its aftermath, however, upset the inaugural festival during its planning process.
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“So without even asking, I was like, ‘let’s pivot.’ And this year we’re just going to do proof of work to try to bring more economy to the downtown and some of their slowest period of the year,” Estep said. “And then next year we’ll do the festival, because I didn’t want to ask them to take a risk in an economy that was tough on them already and they were already unsure of their future. I wanted them to have a community come together and show them it was worth doing.”
Align Augusta would present an alternative approach to promoting businesses, patrons and the community at large. The money collected would go towards participating artists and performers. Streets wouldn’t be closed or blocked off, and, at least initially, the festival wouldn’t rent out Augusta Common.
Participating venues could also host smaller satellite businesses, either from downtown or other areas in the city, that may share aspects in common.
“Let’s say 2 Wolves Apothecary [located at Surrey Center] and Sirius Sage [on Broad Street], they have some goals in common. They could have an informational event that is entertaining, but also kind of talks about what they do,” Estep said, further explaining in her example that local artists could be paired with the businesses to design promotional t-shirts, printed by a local shop, facilitating connections between businesses. “I’m trying to form collaboration between those three really important pillar sectors, because then… we have sustainable networks and relationships for the rest of the year, which really brings some huge strength to the dialogue we don’t have, or maybe don’t have time to have.”
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Estep hopes the boost from Masters Week shows that such community-led efforts can help the city save money, make money and ultimately foster more solidarity, especially — for small businesses — during low-traffic times of the year.
“I think that that method could be repeated throughout all of our festivals, which means that it’s sustainable,” she said. “And it means that we don’t have to put on galas, and we don’t have to do a big events to ask for money. We can do something cheaper, and then we don’t have to rely on that.”
For information on Align Augusta, contact Estep at wondercusp@gmail.com
