Tom Tom Founders Festival is a week-long celebration of music, art, innovation, and food drawing tens of thousands of visitors to Charlottesville & Albemarle County
Charlottesville, VA (March 28, 2017) – Charlottesville & Albemarle County will be home to the sixth annual Tom Tom Founders Festival April 10-16, 2017. This week-long festival is a celebration of music, art, innovation, and food, centered over Founder’s Day (Thomas Jefferson’s birthday) on April 13. This unique festival turns the city of Charlottesville into a creative canvas for innovators, visionaries, and artists and helps draw tens of thousands of visitors to the region. This year’s festival will bring 100+ events, 60+ bands, and 300+ speakers to the Charlottesville area.
New to this year’s festival is the Hometown Summit, which will take place at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center April 13-15. This event is dubbed “America’s biggest conference for small cities” and is presented in partnership with the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. With more than 150 speakers, this three-day conference will combine 300 leaders from more than 40 small and mid-sized cities across America, as well as experts in national media, foundations, and policy centers to discuss creative and successful initiatives for community problem solving. For more information about the Hometown Summit, visit https://tomtomfest.com/hometown-summit/.
The 3rd annual Founders Summit will take place April 13-15 at the Paramount Theater. This event will bring together a group of extraordinary entrepreneurs who will share their founding stories and offer their insights and advice on starting up anything, anywhere. In addition to the founding stories, attendees can also look forward to industry luncheons, keynote workshops to hone their entrepreneurial skills, an investor summit, plus mixers and socials with the region’s top talent. For more information about the Founder Summit, visit https://tomtomfest.com/founders-summit/.
Also featured at this year’s festival will be a program titled Innovations in Democracy: First 100 Days of Trump. This informative event will bring together some of the nation’s leading presidential scholars and journalists to assess the state of American democracy. Notable speakers at this event include Senator Mark Warner, Peter Baker, and Chris Cillizza. For more information about Innovations in Democracy: First 100 Days of Trump, visit tomtomfest.com/democracy.
The ever-popular block parties will once again take place at this year’s festival. These block parties are free events that take place on Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. Attendees can expect to enjoy delicious food from numerous food trucks, a beer garden, live music, a tech mixer, and more. In addition to the music found at the block parties, there will also be musical events sprinkled throughout the festival, including a downtown concert series, a metal showcase, and Porchella, which features local musicians playing on the porches of homes in the historic Belmont neighborhood. In addition to all of these events, this year’s Tom Tom Founders Festival will also include an iron chef competition, craft cocktail competition, farm to table restaurant week, a Youth Summit, and a crowdfunded pitch night. For more details about all of the events and programs taking place in this year’s festival, visit
Now entering its sixth year, the Tom Tom Founders Festival has seen exponential growth since its inception in 2012. Starting with approximately 6,700 attendees in its inaugural year, the attendance has grown to nearly 40,000 and the festival generated an estimated economic impact of $2.4 million to the region in 2016.
About the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau (CACVB):
In addition to serving as the global resource for marketing the tourism assets of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, through www.visitcharlottesville.org, the CACVB assists tour operators, meeting planners, reunions and other groups in planning visits to the destination. CACVB’s mission is “to enhance the economic prosperity of City and County by promoting, selling and marketing the City of Charlottesville and County of Albemarle, as a destination, in pursuit of the meetings and tourism markets.” CACVB operates the Downtown Visitor Center (610 E Main St) which is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and a second visitor center, the Albemarle Tourism and Adventure Center in downtown Crozet at the historic train depot; it is open Wednesday – Saturday 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Sunday Noon – 5:00 p.m. The CACVB also provides a touch-screen kiosk at Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center. The official website of the CACVB is www.visitcharlottesville.org. In addition, the organization manages powerful social media channels; ExperienceCharlottesville on Facebook, @VisitCVille on Twitter, CVilleVA on Pinterest, and @CharlottesvilleVA on Instagram and Vimeo.
