Brightside Child & Family Advocacy proudly announces the 17th Annual Dancing with Savannah Stars, set to take place on April 11, 2025, at Victory North. This highly anticipated signature fundraising event will bring together community leaders who will take the stage in support of Brightside Advocacy’s mission to provide advocacy and resources for children in foster care.

Brightside Advocacy will kick off the excitement with a Launch Party on January 28, 2025, at 208 Wine Bar, where this year’s dancers will be introduced, and fundraising efforts will officially begin. While the event is closed to the public, media representatives are invited to attend.

The 2025 Dancing with Savannah Stars participants include:

• Kelly Roberts, B Street Salon
• Christina Harley, Christina’s Healing Hand
• Anthony Burton, Burton Law Offices
• Brooke Chase, Simply B.Social
• Mahala Lewis, Satchel & Port City Sewing Co.
• Glory Paul, Farah and Farah Law Firm & CASA Volunteer
• Quin Peterson, Housing Savannah
• Gassi Mendoza, LYNCH Associates Architects, PC
• Marshall Moise, Transform Savannah
• Megan McCray, Savannah State University
• Laura Stanga, CASA Volunteer
• Liz Moore, SCAD
• Eric Bailey, Jaja Financial Group & Comedian

Each Dancing with Savannah Stars participant is committed to raising $15,000, with all proceeds supporting Brightside Advocacy’s three programs. Savannah CASA provides trained volunteers to advocate for children in foster care, ensuring their safety and well-being. Bright House offers a safe, supportive space for supervised visitations and family reunification efforts. Brighter Futures, Brightside’s newest initiative, helps older youth aging out of foster care transition into adulthood through mentorship, life skills training, and housing support. Funds raised will ensure that children, families, and young adults receive the advocacy and resources they need to build stable, thriving futures.

“This event is not only a fun and engaging way for our community to come together, but it also plays a vital role in raising critical funds to support children and families in need,” said Kate Blair, Executive Director of Brightside Advocacy. “We are committed to ensuring that every child has the advocacy, stability, and resources necessary to thrive. Our team works tirelessly to empower volunteers, support families, and create opportunities that lead to brighter futures for those we serve.”

For more information on sponsorship opportunities or to support this year’s dancers, visit brightsideadvocacy.org/dwss or contact terry@brightsideadvocacy.org.

Billy Strings is bringing his Spring 2025 Tour to Enmarket Arena for two unforgettable nights, April 11 & 12!

A Jason Isbell record always lands like a decoder ring in the ears and hearts of his audience, a soundtrack to his world and magically to theirs, too. Weathervanes carries the same revelatory power. This is a storyteller at the peak of his craft, observing his fellow wanderers, looking inside and trying to understand, reducing a universe to four minutes. He shrinks life small enough to name the fear and then strip it away, helping his listeners make sense of how two plus two stops equaling four once you reach a certain age—and carry a certain amount of scars. “There is something about boundaries on this record,” Isbell says. “As you mature, you still attempt to keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you’re growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself.” Weathervanes is a collection of grown-up songs: Songs about adult love, about change, about the danger of nostalgia and the interrogation of myths, about cruelty and regret and redemption. Life and death songs played for and by grown ass people. Some will make you cry alone in your car and others will make you sing along with thousands of strangers in a big summer pavilion, united in the great miracle of being alive. The record features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers. They make a big noise, as Isbell puts it, and he feels so comfortable letting them be a main prism through which much of the world hears his art. He can be private but with them behind him he transforms, and there is a version of himself that can only exist in their presence. When he plays a solo show, he is in charge of the entire complicated juggle. On stage with the 400 Unit, he can be a guitar hero when he wants, and a conductor when he wants, and a smiling fan of the majesty of his bandmates when he wants to hang back and listen to the sound. The roots of this record go back into the isolation of the pandemic and to Isbell’s recent time on the set as an actor on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. There were guitars in his trailer and in his rented house and a lot of time to sit and think. The melancholy yet soaring track “King of Oklahoma” was written there. Isbell also watched the great director work, saw the relationship between a clear vision and its execution, and perhaps most important, saw how even someone as decorated as Scorsese sought out and used his co-workers’ opinions. “It definitely helped when I got into the studio,” Isbell says. “I had this reinvigorated sense of collaboration. You can have an idea and you can execute it and not compromise — and still listen to the other people in the room.”

Event Highlights for “The Cure is Out There”:

Food trucks offering a variety of delicious options
Live music and performances
Vendor booths featuring unique local products
Fun games and activities for all ages
Exciting prizes and surprises throughout the day

Events include Celtic entertainment, vending of Scottish wares, sheep-herding, traditional Scottish and American foods, genealogy assistance, heavy athletics, highland dance, bagpipe competitions and multiple family activities.

TEDxSavannah will return on Friday, May 16, 2025, showcasing local speakers under the theme “Curiosity Unleashed.” This immersive event will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., with doors opening at 8 a.m. at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong Campus Fine Arts Auditorium in Savannah, Ga. Tickets are currently on sale at tedxsavannah.com, with early bird pricing available until March 1, 2025.

The 2025 TEDxSavannah event will feature thought-provoking talks and live performances, with each speaker limited to 12 minutes to share ideas that resonate with the Savannah community. Live talks will be recorded and later shared on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel, reaching a global audience of over 40 million subscribers.

Early bird tickets are currently on sale for $50, which include seating, onsite parking, lunch, snacks, coffee and admission to the speaker meet-and-greet immediately following the main TEDxSavannah event. Beginning on March 1, 2025, general admission tickets will increase to $60 per person.

Special discounts are available for educators, students, nonprofits, active-duty military and first responders. A limited number of VIP/Friends of TEDxSavannah tickets are also available for $100, which include priority seating access, priority lunch access, lunch, seating, parking and a special VIP badge.

Tickets are currently available at tedxsavannah.com. Groups of more than six attendees can receive a 10% discount on the price of their tickets by contacting Clinton Edminster at clinton.edminster@gmail.com.

TEDxSavannah 2025 sponsorship opportunities are currently open. Interested businesses can contact TEDxSavannah at tedxsavannah.com or tedxsav@gmail.com.