Dogwood Arts is adding a new entry to its growing list of community art traditions. The first Knoxwalls Murals & Music Festival will take place Saturday, May 30, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in Emory Place, bringing a day of live mural painting, music and neighborhood energy to an already colorful historic corridor.
The event centers on a live mural competition featuring 10 paid artists painting 8’x8’ panels throughout the day. Visitors can watch as the murals take shape, listen to performances from local and regional musicians, and enjoy food trucks and local vendors set up along the closed street.
Once the murals are complete, the public will have the opportunity to vote online to determine the 1st and 2nd place winners, who will each be awarded permanent mural commissions at sites around Knoxville. The completed 8’x8’ murals will then be sold through an online auction, with proceeds shared between the artists and Dogwood Arts’ Mural Program, helping fund even more public art across the city.
The event’s future isn’t just downtown. While this first year will be held at Emory Place, the plan is for Knoxwalls Murals & Music to move to a new neighborhood each year.
I met with Dogwood Arts Executive Director Sherry Jenkins and Visual Arts Program Manager Emily Curran on-site to learn about the new event. The weather was maximum autumn drama—sun one minute, icy sideways wind the next. But all those shifting shadows on the old brick underscored what this event is about: celebrating and elevating the beauty that’s already here.
“The intention of it,” Sherry said, “is really to start a new program that is mobile and can be anywhere. Next time it might be East Knoxville, or Oak Ridge, or South Knox. But the first year, the most obvious place to start is here at Emory Place, next to our Knoxwalls project. It’s a way to make sure people who missed that can see it, and to throw a big street party celebrating this neighborhood.”
Last year’s Knoxwalls at Emory Place installation, a partnership between Dogwood Arts, Visit Knoxville and Lilienthal Gallery, turned the back sides of several buildings into a sprawling outdoor gallery — more than 7,000 square feet of color and images.
“We did that project as a celebration of the neighborhood,” Emily said. “We’d seen what murals can do, like with Strong Alley, how they can totally change people’s perception of a space.”
The alley behind Emory place used to be kind of a sketchy corridor that nobody went into for any good reason. Now it’s one of the prettiest corners of the city. Emory Place has quietly evolved under the vision of artist and developer Ilana Lilienthal, who has intentionally leased its storefronts to creative, women-owned businesses.
In the year since the mural project was unveiled, Dogwood Arts has been asking: how do we keep this momentum going?
“We knew we wanted to grow it, but in a sustainable way,” Emily said. “I started looking at other mural festivals, went to a couple myself, and we started thinking — what if we did something like that here? A murals and music festival, a street party, something that keeps the energy alive but can move around.”
That idea became Knoxwalls Murals & Music Festival, a one-day burst of creative energy that Sherry describes as “low build, low breakdown, high impact.” It will benefit from the City ordinance passed earlier this year that opens up city parks and streets for festivals where beer is served, which was previously limited to particular spaces such as Market Square and the Old City.
The 10 muralists will have total creative freedom. Most will start sketching or prepping the day before, then paint live during the festival as the public wanders between walls, watching the pieces take shape.
“It’s rare for muralists to have that much liberty,” Emily said. “A lot of times, they’re given a theme or told what to paint. This time, they can do whatever they want — whatever represents them as artists.”
Being in May, it’s the perfect bookend to Dogwood season. “We start the season with Chalk Walk,” Sherry said, referencing the beloved Market Square tradition, another event that highlights how creativity lives in public spaces here. “Now we’ll end it with Knoxwalls.”
“Chalk Walk brings all this life to Market Square for a day, and the businesses around it benefit,” Emily said. “We’re hoping for that same kind of impact here. Every time this festival moves, it’ll infuse new energy into a different neighborhood.”
For sponsorships or to learn more about the Dogwood Arts Mural Program, visit dogwoodarts.com/murals. Muralist applications open Nov. 10, 2025.
