The Advoc8te is very sad to confirm there will be no LUMEN8ANACOSTIA this year. Despite our best efforts at ARCH Development Corporation we applied for but did not receive any grant funding to host the festival this year. We are hopeful and optimistic that LUMEN8ANACOSTIA will return next year -- bigger and better! 

  Nikki Peele , director of marketing and business development at ARCH Development Corporation, the Anacostia-based firm that's tried to revitalize the neighborhood through the arts and is the driving force behind Lumen8, says ARCH applied for public and private grants for Lumen8 that never came in. (The first Lumen8 was funded partly through an   ArtPlace grant via the D.C. Office of Planning .) This year's festival was initially going to be held in the spring. Then, when funding was still lacking, it got pushed back to the fall. Now it's been scrapped altogether.  

"We just didn’t get any grant funding," says Peele. "We couldn’t afford to take on the whole financial burden ourselves."