The Gnu's Room will host The Southside Arts Festival on Saturday, Dec. 3. The Festival will feature a celebration of local and area poets, writers, artists, musicians and more. The event will also be a day of fundraising for The Gnu's Room. All funds raised will go toward the remodel of the existing store, as well as begin the renovation of the store's basement, to provide additional performance and art space.

The Gnu’s Room owner, Tina Tatum, said Auburn University Building Science and Architecture students have volunteered their time to redesign the store.

“They’re looking at doing it in phases with phase one being a renovation of what we currently have to just help us seat more people when we do our performances,” Tatum said. “The next phase will be to renovate the basement and make it a useable space. It will pretty much double our space.”

The event will begin at 9 a.m. and will end at 9 p.m. During that time there will be readings, book signings, musical performances, a silent art auction and more. There will also be an all-day book sale, drink specials, a bake sale, handmade merchandise available for purchase and T-shirt sale.

Tatum said they hope to raise a large chunk of the amount needed for the first renovation and plan to have more fundraisers to raise enough for the rest.

The Gnu’s Room is currently awaiting its official designation letter of tax exempt status from the IRS, however, the Auburn Arts Association has offered to be
its fiscal partner until that time. Any monetary gifts in the form of checks must be made out to the Auburn Arts Association with a designation in the memo line for The Gnu's Room.

“The Auburn Arts Association has been good to us and we try to cooperate with each other,” Tatum said. “We furnish coffee for their Sunday matinees when the community theatre performs. We try to help out however we can with fundraisers they do. They approached us about reciprocating that. Any checks from folks that want tax receipts will need to be made out to the Auburn Arts Association since they are already a tax exempt organization. They’ll get the tax receipt and we’ll get the benefit of the funds.”

Tatum said along with the fundraiser, she sees The Southside Arts Festival as another way to give local artists a platform.

“In addition to this being a fundraiser, we’re just looking at a way to put the spotlight on local musicians and writers and poets and performers of all kinds with this festival,” she said.

The Southside Arts Festival Musical Performance Schedule:
11 a.m. – Noisy Deirdre
4 p.m. – Jazz with Jimmy
7 p.m. – Adventure the Great