2025 Phoenix Festival: An uplifting day of joy in 76104

Last Saturday, BRAVE/R Together‘s 2025 Phoenix Festival brought a day of joy to Evans Plaza on the Historic South Side of Fort Worth. “Cowtown,” “Funkytown,” “Where the West Begins…”there are many names for the country’s 11th largest city, but deep inside the city remains a community with dire needs waiting to be met. Enter BRAVE/R Together and the 2025 Phoenix Festival. This year’s festival “unfolds through the prism of two captivating chapters: Healthcare Justice & Community Joy!”

Resilient. Resourcesful. Resurgent. That’s how I would describe the south side of Fort Worth. The south side was home to many educational, professional, ministerial and industrial icons in Black America. Buildings, schools, and programs immortalize these local icons and prominent national figures. However prominent in their time, their names and legacies are of a bygone era, kept alive by the memories of those who were alive in their lifetimes. What remains on the south side is a community seeking to rise again, this time to new heights. Faced with decades of decaying infrastructure and blighted by gang violence and crime, the historic south side’s better days were a thing of history.

Though not entirely removed from its 2019 designation of having the lowest life expectancy in all of Texas, the south side is much different today than it was six years ago. This study prompted Dr. Shawn Lassiter to create BRAVE/R Together and begin the work of course correcting years of diverted economic, medical, social and entrepreneurial assets away from the once bustling community. In 2021, Lassiter’s vision expanded to an all-day festival, celebration and inflection point. At this festival, members of the Historic South Side, Hillside, and Morningside neighborhoods could come together, get to know each other, and receive needed resources. With the government shutdown entering historic lengths, food scarcity and benefit uncertainty gripped many of the residents on fixed or limited incomes. The festival provides fresh food, personal/hygienic items and baby formula and diapers as part of its giveaways, ensuring that no need goes unmet.

Dr. Shawn Lassiter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

For the health conscious and especially the aging community members, Healthy Avenue provides free health and wellness screenings with a plan to followup with a local physician. The Market Plaza Extravaganza provides fresh fruits and vegetables and an assortment of handmade goods and wares, a much-needed resource because portions of the 76104 zip code are in a food and retail desert. There is one major grocery store, but it is miles away from many residents on the south side. Whether you need a job, cellular service, help from the city, educational resources or after-school activities for your children, Resource Row has something for every resident in 76104, even its youngest residents.

The Phoenix Festival also features “The Grove,” a workout area for festivalgoers to get moving, live music and a DJ who plays music throughout the day to keep them grooving. In the Enriching Kidz Korner kids’ play area, bounce houses keep the children engaged while their parents gather the goods provided for them. The festival is growing each year, and with it, soaring to new heights in service to the 76104 community.

Each year at “Our Table,” BRAVE/R Together celebrates agents of change on the south side, highlighting the transformative work happening in real time. The festival is more than a Saturday spent collecting free food and dancing in the street. BRAVE/R Together exists for an end, and the Phoenix Festival is the opportunity they make to give back to a beloved community in need. Festival goers can join the many year-round programs and initiatives hosted by BRAVE/R Together and become an ambassador to contribute to its mission. Each year, the Phoenix Festival serves more families than the previous year, and this year’s numbers eclipsed last year’s tally. As the festival grows, so does its impact.