When Corey Fagan looks back on First Friday’s origins, it’s in admiration of its founders’ modest initial mission.

“When First Friday started 20 years ago by Cindy Funkhouser and those beautiful ladies … it was a ghost town down here,” Fagan, the nonprofit’s executive director, says of Downtown Las Vegas. “They wanted to bring people to their businesses. They were invested in this area. They wanted to celebrate these artists that people didn’t know even existed.”

Today, that core goal persists on First Fridays. Each month, a featured local artist receives a generous spotlight on their work, which is exposed to some 20,000 visitors passing through the closed-to-traffic city streets.

“For some of these artists, this is their bread and butter,” Fagan says. “They don’t have a gallery; they don’t have a brick and mortar. They’re making art in their house. This is how they feed their families, by coming to First Friday.”

And, she adds, First Friday is “critical to the economic development of this area, and to its businesses.”

Bobbie Ann Howell, who serves as the program manager of Nevada Humanities, echoes that sentiment.

“I’ve been at First Friday since the days we would have a few tenuous tables out in the middle of the street, waiting for the sun to go down or for the wind to quit blowing,” she says. “It’s been one of those roads where you just want to keep that part of the community going, because I think the community element of First Friday is its biggest strength.”

Howell says Nevada Humanities moved its offices to the Arts District for that very reason and continues to see the benefit. “First Friday allows us to really reach people directly,” she says, “which is probably the hardest thing to do in this digital world that we’re in, to have that one-on-one conversation with someone.”

The event brings “a wonderfully diverse audience to our door,” she says. Sometimes it’s skateboarders, other times it’s women in fishnets or parents pushing strollers and tourists popping in to familiarize themselves with the local scene.

“It’s such a broad and diverse community that every day we’re trying to figure out how can we make sure we’re reaching and serving everyone that we can,” she says. “First Friday helps us do that and we’re appreciative of getting to be involved with them in whatever way we can.”

With rising Downtown rents forcing some art hot spots, such as the Priscilla Fowler Gallery, to uproot and move beyond the First Friday festival boundaries, foot traffic has become more important than ever.

The footprint of the monthly festival has shrunk considerably since its Tony Hsieh-owned iteration, when First Friday stretched five blocks from Colorado Avenue to Coolidge Avenue, with art clusters on nearly every corner. Today, it covers just one block, from Charleston Avenue north to Coolidge, and from Art Way west to Main Street.

But Fagan says that contraction, due in part to higher costs for security and road closures, has an upside. “When everything shut down [at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020], it allowed us to really focus on coming back smaller and more sustainable, and then [we’ll] grow as we can,” she says.

And though some restaurants and bars are now outside the First Friday footprint, it hasn’t stopped patrons from wandering in for dinner and drinks. “Having draws like Brewery Row inside of the Arts District is special, because it’s bringing a different demographic out that’s going to travel to the galleries,” she explains.

The First Friday Foundation continues to work on behalf of its artists outside of the monthly event, Fagan says. The nonprofit oftentimes connects artists other nonprofits, and with sponsors such as T-Mobile and Nissan, to work on art mural projects in exchange for stipends. Events like the First Friday Art and Gala Fundraiser on September 16 will feature locally created pieces for auction.

And, Fagan says, there are plans to go even further.

“My big vision for First Friday is to have a residency program at some point, because I think artists need a space where they can feel welcome to come from wherever they’re coming,” Fagan says, “and to have artists who are struggling here not having to think about their gallery rents.”

It’s a lofty idea that she admits will take time, funding and resources, but it remains on her future wish list.

Recently First Friday’s community support programs have expanded to include help for other programs such as the domestic violence shelter SafeNest, and their charitable efforts will soon reach another vulnerable population through Art U Okay?, a program advocating for ​mental health support and teen suicide prevention. First Friday is working with the City of Las Vegas to debut the program in March 2023, and 13 local schools will be invited to participate.

“We are most known for the tradition, consistency of this monthly event; and we’re beginning to be known for all of the ancillary things done on other days within the community that support local artists, small business, and nonprofits throughout the year,”Fagan says.

“This long-standing event has embraced our community through challenging times, always in celebration of our artists. I am always honored [to] create a space where the artists can do what they do best, which I believe is to heal our world through art.

We need that more than ever right now.”

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