Brite Winter is a wintertime community celebration of music, arts, fire, games, and snow on the West Bank of the Flats in Cleveland, Ohio. The annual festival with the emphasis on music hosted its first event in 2010. A six-stage festival takes place every February and features about 35-40 bands every year. It attracts about 20,000 attendees during rather quiet and somewhat lethargic winter time in Cleveland.
Past lineups of the festival included The Lighthouse and the Whaler, The Modern Electric, AJ and the Woods, Automatic Weapons, The Baker’s Basement, Bummed Out, Candi Fresca, Connections, Dark Water Rebellion, DJ ESO, Falling Stars, Hello Luna, Herzog, Holden Laurence, Jack Fords, Jason Patrick Meyers, The Scuzzballs, Seafair, Shawn Brewster, Smoke Screen, Tom Adams & The Last Resort, The Whiskey Hollow, Archie Green with Uptowne Buddha, Signals Midwest, Runaway Brother, By Light We Loom, Tim Moon, Midnight Passenger, Ex-Astronaut, The Village Bicycle, School of Rock, Holden Laurence, Austin Stambaugh, Bro Dylan, Front Porch Lights, and These Violent Young Lovers.
The founders of the Brite Winter Music & Arts Festival were Emily Hornack and Jimmy Harris. They ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the festival in 2014. The non-profit event gathers people of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds. Since its start, the festival was held during temperatures as low as 8°F (-13 °C) and as high as 69 °F (20 °C). No matter the weather, Brite Winter is a festival where the community comes together to celebrate and have fun.
