After multiple votes, two strategic analyses and many hard conversations, the Maitland Rotary Club has decided to cancel the annual art festival it has held for nearly 50 years.
“I can’t tell you how extremely difficult this was,” said Kelly Feist, president of the Maitland Rotary Art Festival Board of Trustees.
Held every year since 1976, the festival traditionally took place in November at Lake Lily Park. The 2024 festival featured 121 artists, with more on the waiting list, Feist said.
The art festival served as a fundraiser for the Rotary Club, which then distributed the money to local nonprofits. Last year, it raked in $44,000 — the highest recorded in a decade.
But the club struggled to find volunteers who could dedicate the time needed to organize the three-day event, Feist said, problems that have hit other art festivals, too.
The Rotary’s volunteer team works for months to plan the festival, and lately, many members haven’t been able to give as much time, Feist said.
“There’s something I hear, and I do have to say it’s probably from some of our younger members, is, ‘I’m scheduling out time for my family,’” she said. “I am so happy to hear that’s the most important thing right now to them, but it also takes away from their time to volunteer.”
The Rotary is now looking at other fundraising options — possibly shorter ones requiring a few hours of commitment — and hopes the art festival could return in the future.
Janet Gamache, who organizes other annual Central Florida art festivals, including ones in Lake Nona and Mount Dora, said across the country festivals face the same issues as long-time organizers age out and young volunteers don’t step in.
“Volunteers want to just show up,” Gamache said. “They want to be there for two hours in a day or three hours, and then they want to go home. They don’t want to do all the legwork that it takes to put on a festival.”
The rising cost of living may be to blame, leaving fewer stay-at-home parents and retirees able to volunteer the way they did 40 years ago, Gamache said.
Chelsea Smith, a copper etching artist from Casselberry, used to show her work at the Maitland festival and Winter Springs festival every fall. Both are now canceled, with Winter Springs hosting its last event in 2022.
Smith remembers going to the Maitland Art Festival as a child before showing her own art there as a teenager. “I was heartbroken,” she said about its cancellation — not just for herself, but for the next generation.
The event used to partner with local schools to feature middle and high school student artists alongside professionals. Smith worries today’s young artists won’t get the same support she received at their age.
“It’s kind of scary to see what I’ve been doing for 15 years, it’s changed so much,” she said. “It’s dying, or disappearing, or changing.”
The Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival, older and larger than Maitland’s, is still running smoothly, said Alice Moulton, president of the festival’s foundation.
Like Maitland’s event, the annual sidewalk art display on Park Avenue is run by volunteers.
The 67-year-old festival features about 215 artists each March.
So far, Moulton said, the Winter Park festival hasn’t experienced the same volunteer deficit as Maitland.
“Our board really only has a couple board members remaining that are really highly seasoned,” she said. “But we always have a lot of very aggressive, anxious new people that come in.”
Typically, a slew of new members vie for the board’s limited 40 organizer spots. Moulton attributes the community’s interest in the arts, and the festival’s national reputation, to its continuous appeal.
Maitland Mayor John Lowndes also said he was sorry to see his city’s event go, noting he “always liked going to that festival.” He attributed part of the event’s challenges to a crowded market.
“When it started, it was one of the unique festivals around,” he said. “Now every weekend, everybody’s got something going on.”
In its letter to the city announcing the event’s cancellation acquired by the Sentinel, the Rotary asked the City of Maitland to consider allowing the club to use the park for an alternate fundraising activity in the future.
“We look forward to a new fundraiser in 2026 and hope that the community will continue to support the Rotary Club of Maitland and our community projects,” the letter said.
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