Kin+ Joined the 2026 Columbus Arts Festival as a Media Partner
Editorial Note: Kin+ is an official partner of the Columbus Arts Festival presented by AEP
The Columbus Arts Festival opens June 12. This year, the Black press is in the room with the artists before they get there.
Kin+ is now an official media partner of the 2026 Columbus Arts Festival, produced by the Greater Columbus Arts Council and presented by the AEP Ohio Foundation. The festival runs Friday, June 12, through Sunday, June 14, on the downtown riverfront. Free. Four stages. More than 250 juried visual artists. GCAC President and CEO Mitch Menchaca and Festival Director Alexis Perrone made the partnership real. Our coverage lives on TalkBack, the Kin+ podcast.
Starting this Friday, June 5th, TalkBack is rolling out the Arts Festival Sessions: five long-form conversations with five Columbus artists ahead of festival weekend. Three are already in the can. Here’s who.
Dre Peace is one of the founding voices of the Liquid Crystal Project, the Columbus collective that’s shaped a generation of hip-hop and neo-soul listeners. He came to Columbus from outside it and stayed for a 15-year love affair with the city. This year, he brings his band Wierfield Place to the Genoa Park Stage on Friday, June 12, at 6:45 p.m. I asked him for one word to describe what he’s bringing to the riverfront. He said: Fresh. He also has a debut solo album dropping this year, and he’s keeping it off the streaming platforms on purpose. An exclusive release for the audience that shows up. Find him on YouTube. Be parked at Genoa Park by 5:45 p.m.
After Dre, we introduce you to our good sistah, Candace O’Neal, working as Canvas by Candace. She has been coming to the Columbus Arts Festival with her family since she was a little girl. This June, for the first time, she’s on the other side of the booth. Candace is one of 19 artists in the 2026 Emerging Festival Artist class, JPMorgan Chase’s program for Central Ohio artists new to major festivals. Her booth is T235 on West Town Street. The work is called the Fruit Collection: vibrant, peaceful, Spirit-led. She told us: The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. Website: candaceoneal.com. Instagram: Canvas by Candace. Commissions open.
Renee Dion is a Columbus singer-songwriter who calls what she makes life music. She performs on the Bicentennial Park Stage on Sunday, June 14, from 3:15 to 4 p.m. Get parked downtown by 2:15. When she sat down with us, she talked about what it costs to carry pain into a recording booth and turn it into something a stranger across the city can feel. I said it during our conversation, and I’ll say it here: TalkBack went to church that day. Her COZY EP is on every platform. New music is in the studio. For booking, and as she told us, talent ain’t free, reach her at reneedionmusic@gmail.com.
We haven’t confirmed yet which episodes four and five will feature. We’re locking those now. When we publish, next week we’ll be sure to drop you a heads up about who the Kinfolks are that were catching up with before the festival begins next Friday, June 11.
Now, the read.
When the Columbus Call & Post reported this city from 1962 to 1995, and the Columbus Post carried it from 1995 to 2015, the Black artists who made Columbus a real cultural city had their own press. Album drops, gallery openings, festival sets, all of it written for Black readers. When that press went quiet, the artists did not. The work kept happening. The coverage stopped.
That gap is what Kin+ was built to close.
We didn’t become a media partner because we needed access. We became one because Black Columbus deserves an editorial perspective on its own creative class that doesn’t ask permission to take it seriously. Visibility is capital. The Chicago Defender did that work nationally. The Call & Post did it here. Kin+ is doing it now, through TalkBack, through every artist we put on the record.
Here’s the move.
One. Subscribe to TalkBack on Kin+. The Arts Festival Sessions drop every other day beginning tomorrow. Episode one, Dre Peace, first.
Two. Show up. The festival is free, June 12 through 14, Downtown Columbus’ Riverfront. Bring cash for the booths.
Three. Block your calendar. Genoa Park by 5:45 p.m. Friday for Dre Peace. Booth T235 any day for Candace O’Neal. Bicentennial Park by 2:15 p.m. Sunday for Renee Dion.
Four. KinFam membership keeps the work running. $12.99 a month, $129.99 a year, or $500 a year founding. Independent Black media in Columbus doesn’t fund itself. Y’all do.
Five. If you’re a Black artist on the 2026 bill and we haven’t reached out, reach out to us. We want every name on the record.
Columbus used to have a Black press that covered Black culture as a matter of course.
It does again.
Welcome Home, Kin Nation.
Congrats!