Friends of Fourth Ward has donated $10,000 to Joedance Film Festival
It’s all about community! Since 2013, Friends of Fourth Ward has been sponsoring Joedance Film Festival.
The Friends of Fourth Ward is an active, volunteer-driven, community organization founded in 1976. Its original primary function was to help rehabilitate and redevelop the Fourth Ward.
In many ways, it has achieved that primary goal. The Friends of Fourth Ward now focuses on funding and providing social, cultural, and educational activities for the Fourth Ward community.
If you are a new visitor walking through the Fourth Ward today, there’s a good chance that you would be pleasantly surprised, perhaps even captivated, by this gem of a tree-lined neighborhood.
You can enjoy an array of residential options ranging from Section 8 housing, to luxurious condos, to splendid single-family homes, anchored by the soothing Fourth Ward park, and dotted with charming dining establishments. And when you look up you can see the dazzling Uptown skyline only blocks away.
But it wasn’t always like that. In the mid-1830s, Charlotte was divided into four political wards. The northwest quadrant was called Fourth Ward – a prosperous area that was home to merchants, ministers, physicians, and numerous churches – formed a strong center of social and religious influence.
By the early 1900s, the trolley had expanded beyond uptown Charlotte, making nearby “suburbs” the neighborhoods of choice. Fourth Ward entered a period of decline that continued until 1976, when the Junior League, UNCC, and a few others undertook a restoration program that fired the imaginations of adventurous urban “pioneers.”
It was these urban pioneers who created the Friends of Fourth Ward in 1976.
Today the Friends of Fourth Ward raises funds to enhance the Fourth Ward community. The organization has also become a vibrant thread in the cultural tapestry of a broader Charlotte.
Pandemics aside, it conducts the annual “Secret Gardens of the Fourth Ward” event in Spring and the well-recognized “Holiday Home Tour” in December. These events, plus contributions from individuals, corporate supporters, and multi-family buildings, fund community programming that benefits the residents of, and visitors to, the Fourth Ward. ‘
The Friends of Fourth Ward also support local causes like the Joedance Film Festival. The Joedance Film Festival “family” has deep roots in the Fourth Ward. The film festival was created to honor the memory and fulfill wish list of Fourth Ward resident Joe Restaino who died of a rare pediatric cancer at the age of twenty.
Diane Restaino, Joe’s mother, created the festival to fund research of rare pediatric cancers at the Atrium Health’s Levine Children’s in Charlotte, North Carolina. The first eight festivals were held in the courtyard of a Fourth Ward condo building on Tenth Street, the last two were hosted at the Charlotte Ballet’s Patricia McBride & Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance theater in the Fourth Ward.
The Friends of Fourth Ward is all about community and the Joedance Film Festival is a key member of our community.
(Article from https://www.joedance.org/blog/friends-of-fourth-ward-sponsoring-joedance-since-2013)