• The first Dogwood Trail opened in Knoxville 70 years ago.
• That led to the creation of Dogwood Arts, an organization that highlights Knoxville’s arts, culture and natural beauty.
• Today, Dogwood Arts supports programs from the Strong Alley Murals to the Southern Skies Music & Whiskey Festival.

When Knoxville’s first Dogwood trail was established 70 years ago, the goal was to make our city more beautiful as it comes to life each spring.

Dogwood Arts shares that same spirit today through a vastly broader lens of arts, culture and nature.

The nonprofit’s work is all about making Knoxville a great place to spend time, whether as a visitor or a resident.

Its big event is the Dogwood Arts Festival, and more recently the Southern Skies Music & Whiskey Festival. Other projects make the city more beautiful year-round, such as its mural and sculpture programs.

“When you come to Knoxville, and you see great architecture, and you see flowers, and you see sculptures and you see murals, you understand that the people who live here care about it,” executive director Sherry Jenkins told Knox News.

A spring full of blooms and events

When it comes to amplifying the city’s natural beauty, the Dogwood Trails and accompanying featured gardens play a central role. Dogwood Arts coordinates the effort each year and promotes the uniquely Knoxville tradition.

Dogwood Trails, open April 1-30, invite drivers and bicyclists to wind through neighborhoods across the city following a distinctive pink stripe on the road.

The group expanded beyond the beauty of the outdoors to the beauty of arts and culture in its first Dogwood Arts Festival in 1961, which welcomed musicians and artists to showcase their talents in Knoxville for 10 days. Since then, Dogwood Arts has built out programming that celebrates music and art at its annual festival and beyond.

The 2025 Dogwood Arts Festival, April 25-27 at World’s Fair Park, will be a lively celebration with music, food, drinks and many tents of artists and makers showcasing pottery, jewelry, photography, leather goods and paintings.

More recently, the nonprofit created the Chalk Walk, when teams and individuals compete to create the best illustrations on Market Square each April.

“It is an action-packed few weeks for us,” Jenkins said.

The team get just a bit of rest before its Southern Skies Music & Whiskey Festival on May 10, an event (with a “Tennessee Whiskey Experience” available as an add-on) headlined this year by Charley Crockett and The Dirty Guv’nahs.

Murals, sculptures bring art to all parts of the city

While the frenzy of spring events can’t be sustained all year, Dogwood Arts has strategies for every season.

Jenkins loves to travel, and her favorite part of visiting somewhere new is “that experience that you can have only there, where you are.” In other words, the things that make a city feel unique, and wholly its own. She sees public art as something that creates “a sense of place,” she said.

Dogwood’s Art in Public Places mural program works to bring splashes of color to the city. The nonprofit pays for murals from local artists in Strong Alley near Market Square. The new KnoxWalls at Emory Place is covered in murals commissioned by artists from far beyond Knoxville to give their masterpieces a home in the Scruffy City.

Jenkins said the organization hopes to expand the initiative with additional KnoxWalls locations, bringing art to unexpected pockets in the city.

The sculpture version of Art in Public Places leases sculptures for a year from artists nationwide, assists in their installation and houses them at sites across Knoxville before they are replaced with new ones. Krutch Park is home to several.

The Maker Exchange gives Knoxville’s artists a home

Dogwood Arts also supports the Maker Exchange, a gallery and event space with a permanent art collection as well as work for sale. The Maker Exchange connects The Tennessean hotel to the World’s Fair Exhibition Hall and includes a restaurant and coffee shop.

“We love just being part of the sort of larger group that is being thoughtful about what Knoxville looks like now, what can Knoxville look like,” Jenkins said.

“I want to do things that highlight the beauty around us, and highlights people doing beautiful things, doing great work that just makes life a little more interesting,” she said.

Hayden Dunbar is the storyteller reporter. Email [email protected].

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