The 17th annual Southern Brewers Festival on August 27 will feature five musical acts including the Grammy Award winning band Los Lobos. The event will allow guests to come in contact with over 30 of the Southeast’s most notable microbreweries, have their choice of over 75 premium ales and lagers to taste, and try delightful dishes from local establishments including, Big River Grille & Brewing Works founder of the festival.
In addition to all this, all proceeds will support Chattanooga’s Kids on the Block (CKOB), an organization that puts its work back in the community by educating children on social issues such as accepting differences, obesity, divorce, and bullying. CKOB does this by using puppets to address these topics, which are sometimes hard for parents to talk to their children about and are particularly hard for younger children to understand. CKOB is a non-profit and independent group founded in 1979 by Mary Anne Schenk. They are one of the oldest, most respected and active troupes in the U.S., says executive director for CKOB, Kelly Williams.
Schenk founded CKOB because she felt that the community needed a program like this on accepting the differences of others. The program kept expanding from there and now is licensed to perform 42 of 44 national programs, serving 14 counties in Tennessee and Georgia. Program director for CKOB, Sue Ivey, says “Last year alone we performed over 400 units of service … and served over 54,000 children and adults.” All CKOB puppeteers are nationally certified Bun Raku artists, a form of Japanese puppetry where the puppeteers dress in all black, with black hoods and gloves, to give the illusion of being the puppet’s shadow.
Williams says, “That illusion allows the children to actually believe these puppets are their buddies. The uniqueness about our program is that children get to talk to the puppets. After we perform our educational program, children ask questions about what they just saw and puppets respond to them and answer all their questions so they can better understand a topic and keep themselves safe and healthy.” Last year’s Southern Brewers Festival one-day event raised $150,000 for CKOB. Over the past five consecutive years that CKOB has been the sole beneficiary for the festival, they have used the funds to introduce eight new programs and purchase about 60 puppets, the cost of these puppets run from $700 to $1,500. They have also been able to add and certify two new puppeteers, making them one of the only troupes in the U.S. to have four full-time nationally certified Bun Raku artists who can do all 42 programs at any given time. They have also expanded to serve two more counties, Bradley and Polk.
“Prior to being the beneficiary for the Southern Brewers Festival, we never even remotely came close to serving as many children or performing as many programs,” Ivey says.
Williams says, “We could not do it without Big River Grille, and their support and belief in what we do to help us to continue to provide a vital and unique education source for children. Every dollar that they invest into CKOB through this festival goes back to the community. We give it back to the children and help educate them.” The Southern Brewers Fest-ival is about education, too. Kelly Wilson, director of marketing at CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries, says one reason Big River Grille & Brewing Works created the event 17 years ago was to share their craft beer knowledge.
“As a brewery restaurant in Chattanooga, we wanted to educate Chattanoogans about the craft beer industry and the specialty that goes into the craft,” she says. “If a patron is already a ‘beer geek,’ they will have a good chance to sample some new beers and some old favorites. This is a great opportunity to taste the good work of hard-working craft brewers, interact with brewers, learn more about the science of brewing, and find a new ‘favorite beer.’ Guests will have the opportunity to learn about beer production from equipment needed, ingredients, the process from start to finish, excetra.”
This year’s festival on Aug-ust 27 will run from 2 p.m. to midnight at the Chattanooga Riverfront Downtown and will feature 30 microbreweries, attracting more than 10,000 beer lovers for a day of fun, festivities, food, beer and music, Wilson says.
This year’s entertainment includes performances by New Familiars, Anders Osborne, George Porter Jr. & Runnin Pardners, Railroad Earth, and Los Lobos. Wilson says of Big River Grille & Brewing Works, “We have been a part of the Chatta-nooga community for more than 18 years and are proud to support an organization like [CKOB] that works so hard to improve the lives of children in our hometown. Community involvement and charitable giving are core principals of our corporate culture and we are dedicated to making a difference in every city where we have a presence.”
Tickets for the 17th annual Southern Brewers Festival are available in advance online. Last year, the festival sold out of beer tokens within 15 minutes of opening, and expectations are high that the crowd will be bigger and the tokens will go faster this year. Find more information online at www.southernbrewersfestival.com.