The Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade

Today, the parade is an annual tradition for Atlanta artists and families – attracting nearly 60,000 people this year – but it wasn’t always this way. In 2010, the first Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade consisted of just a few hundred participants and virtually no spectators. The small crowd enthusiastically marched along what is now the Atlanta BeltLine’s Eastside Trail — which, at the time, was merely a poorly lit strip of gravel, a former railroad path overgrown with weeds and littered with trash.

To understand how the Lantern Parade has evolved, it’s important to understand where it started. The creative force behind this magical spectacle is Chantelle Rytter, a Baltimore native and Penn State grad with a passion for using arts to bring people and communities together. Rytter’s passion and whip-smart demeanor comes across within minutes of speaking with her. Prior to moving to Atlanta, she spent a decade in New Orleans, immersing herself in its arts scene and, particularly, the vibrant brass-band parade culture that helps define civic life in the Big Easy.

Inspired by what she saw, Rytter and her friends formed a parade group called the Krewe of Grateful Gluttons in 1999 while still in New Orleans. The Krewe’s name comes from “the sense that life is a banquet,” says Rytter. “The Krewe Creed is 1) Try everything. 2) Have seconds. And 3) Say thank you.” The beauty of the Krewe lies in their unlikeliness. They are not artists, puppeteers or musicians, says Rytter. They are “just regular people”: a chef, a real estate agent, a waitress, a salesman, an engineer, a hairstylist, a designer, and a programmer.

This perfect team had only one problem: while Rytter lived in New Orleans, the rest of the Krewe lived in Atlanta, 500 miles away. But after many long drives between Atlanta and NOLA, the Krewe finally persuaded Rytter to move to Atlanta in 2001, where they immediately began spreading their brand of quirky parade culture. The Krewe made their Atlanta debut in the very first Little Five Points Halloween Parade and quickly became known for their signature 10-foot-tall skeleton puppets. They became a fixture in the Halloween Parade and other neighborhood-specific festivals, but Rytter saw the potential for so much more.

“A parade transforms our public space in a way that, even though it's the same space that you walk by to go to work every day, it becomes a magical environment,” she explains. “When you lay down joyful, shared memories together in a place, it's a blessing on that place.”

While the inaugural parade featured about 400 attendees who walked the two-mile path — reportedly the largest number of people to ever stand together on the BeltLine at one time – by 2011, the Krewe hosted four lantern-making workshops that brought out 500 people and coincided with the opening of the Old Fourth Ward Park. By 2012, a sizeable buzz had begun surrounding the parade. The Krewe hosted six lantern-making workshops, and approximately 1,250 participants and spectators showed up to witness the spectacle. In 2013, the parade was given a permanent date, the Saturday after Labor Day. Attendance grew exponentially to about 14,000 people, and it became the official kick-off of the Art on the BeltLine season.

In 2014, the official ribbon cutting for the Eastside Trail took place, and the vision of the BeltLine that Atlantans had been hearing about for years began to really take shape. Rytter and her Krewe hosted 30 sold-out lantern workshops. Multiple bands became part of the lineup, and attendance swelled to 23,000. By 2015, there was a definite pattern of returning locals who had made lantern-making part of their family tradition. The Krewe hosted dozens of workshops in a space donated by Ponce City Market, attendance reached a whopping 60,000, and the event’s place in Atlanta history couldn’t be denied.

“No one does stuff like this,” says Rytter. “No one is having a second-line parade at night where everyone is invited to make a lantern and just jump in. You don’t need to join a club or register or even be on time. As an individual, you can rock this out. I love that about it.”