The now-closed LaRose’s Jazz Club and Restaurant–one of the influences named in the spirit of the upcoming Germantown Jazz Festival. (GIH | Rasheed Ajamu)

We’ve officially entered the Quadranscentennial of the 2000s, which is just a fancy way to say it’s 2025! The new year has many implications for people’s personal lives, usually when individuals reassess their goals and priorities.

As the premiere hyperlocal newsroom for the Germantown neighborhood, our team always has our ears to the ground. In this spirit, we have compiled a list of arts & culture initiatives we look forward to and why as the year progresses.

Germantown Jazz Festival

Germantown is no stranger to jazz, with now-closed venues like Morgan’s Jazz Nightclub and LaRose’s, where folks communed to dance and connect under dim lights and smooth and rhythmic sounds. Our neighborhood also has a collaborative album with our “For The Love of Germantown” namesake, featuring local artists like Karen Smith. 

And while Germantown used to see the People’s Poetry and Jazz Festival annually, hosted by the Black Writers Museum, the festival has been on hiatus for the past few years. However, a new frontier is looking to rise to bring the neighborhood together for not one but three days of jazz appreciation. 

Earlier this year, Khadijah Renee Morgan ran an op-ed with GIH about her plans to help launch a new festival, where she also illustrated some of the significance of jazz in the neighborhood. Thus far, she has garnered the support of various leaders and groups including Councilperson Cindy Bass and GAD Philly to help launch this festival that brings both local and renowned artists on one stage to light up the neighborhood. 

The festival is set to run from April 25 through 27 across six locations, including Germantown Friends School, Germantown Settlement Music School, The First Presbyterian Church, The Johnson House, Vernon Park, and the Nile Cafe. 

In Morgan’s piece, she asked, “Can they do it?” Well, we sure hope so.

Germantown 250

Earlier this year, Resolve Philly and GIH partnered to host a listening session with Philadelphia 250 to ask Germantown residents how they’d like to see 250 years of America celebrated in the country. 

Not to our surprise — but rather in alignment with the spirit of Germantown that we know and love — we learned some of our neighbors who attended left that meeting with a bit of confusion, which they transformed into a cause and concept to remind residents and visitors alike that “the story starts here.”

Germantown neighbors and leaders in their own right, Kristen S. Clark, NOMAD, Courtney Childs, and Chrissy Watts, came together to start the GERMANTOWN 250 initiative, dedicated to uplifting and celebrating the vibrant and decadent history of Germantown. As the year 2026 moves closer, there are three core pillars the organizers stand by to ensure a prosperous celebration: historical preservation, community-driven arts initiatives, and strategic partnerships.

The group has already hosted opportunities for neighbors to learn more and connect. While there are no scheduled events right now, you can always check out www.germantown250.com to see what’s coming up.

Compositions of Black Joy

GIH has said it quite a few times, and we’ll probably never stop: Germantown is home to literary forces. Last year, we saw three literary works published by Germantown neighbors.

The first release: “Migration Letters” by seasoned poet and writer Nzadi Keita. The book is a collection of poems exploring themes of Black history, identity, and culture via Keita’s personal and family experiences shaped by the Great Migration.

The second was the fantasy novel “House of Frank” by now-twice-published author Kay Synclaire. “House of Frank” follows a witch grappling with grief who finds healing and belonging with an unlikely group of characters in a magical arboretum–Ash Gardens.

Finally, we saw the release of “Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia” by Germantown native Menika Dirkson. Two years after being featured in our Germantown Neighbors series, Dirkson continued her mission to make history accessible with a text that examines how harmful narratives from police, journalists, and city officials during the Great Migration criminalized Black communities, leading to systemic injustices like police brutality and segregation.

This year, we have our eyes on one more book drop.

If you’ve ever attended the Juneteenth Festival held by the Johnson House, the longest-running festival in Philadelphia, this will probably interest you.

In 2023, Historic Germantown and the Johnson House launched a joint exhibition displaying the works of photographer and activist Tieshka K. Smith, who has been capturing the essence of the festival through her lens. The exhibition was presented as the “Documenting the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival in Germantown.”

Over a year since the exhibition aired, Smith’s poignant and powerful documentation gets its next chapter — a photo book.

According to the website, “Compositions of Black Joy: A Visual Chronicle of the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival” will showcase the seven-year journey of the festival, which “celebrates Black families, culture, commerce, and community-building” in our neighborhood.

While there is no release date yet, you can be assured the GIH team will be anticipating our copy.