South Alabama’s early-2019 calendar is packed with art, music and community gatherings, from downtown Fairhope’s monthly art stroll to a major Christian music tour stopping at the University of South Alabama. The first weeks of the new year offer residents across Mobile and Baldwin counties a full slate of reasons to get out of the house, with events spanning gallery nights, health-focused forums, arena-scale concerts and community fundraisers.
First Friday Art Walk — Jan. 4, Fairhope
The city of Fairhope hosts its First Friday Art Walk from 6 to 8 p.m., beginning at the Eastern Shore Art Center. Strollers can wander downtown Fairhope visiting galleries and taking in live music. Details: 251-928-2228.
First Friday has become one of the Eastern Shore’s most reliable traditions, drawing art lovers and casual strollers into the downtown streets on the first evening of each month. Fairhope’s downtown core — walkable, densely packed with shops and galleries and anchored by the Eastern Shore Art Center — is well suited to the format, and January’s edition carries the added appeal of winter light over Mobile Bay as galleries keep their doors open late.
Local galleries rotate exhibitions regularly, and the art walk gives collectors and first-time visitors alike a low-pressure way to see new work. Live music along the route adds to the festival feel, and downtown restaurants typically see a boost as strollers settle in for dinner after the walk.
Community Engagement Forum — Jan. 11, Mobile
The University of South Alabama Student Center Ballroom hosts “Building Blocks for Impactful Community Engagement toward Health Equity,” the third Forum on Community-Engaged Scholarship, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The event focuses on the elements of community engagement that advance health equity and on building connections between researchers and community-based organizations.
The forum reflects a growing emphasis at universities nationwide on scholarship that involves the community as a partner rather than a subject. South Alabama’s health-related research mission — anchored by USA Health and the university’s colleges of medicine, nursing and allied health — makes health equity a natural organizing theme for the gathering.
Attendees can expect a full working day: sessions running from morning through mid-afternoon, with programming designed for faculty, students, nonprofit leaders and community members who want to build durable research partnerships. The mobile city’s health disparities, from access to care in underserved neighborhoods to chronic disease rates that outpace state and national averages, give the forum’s subject matter real local urgency.
Winter Jam 2019 — Jan. 13, Mobile
Winter Jam 2019 rolls into the USA Mitchell Center from 6 to 10 p.m. with a heavyweight Christian lineup: Newsboys United, Danny Gokey, Mandisa, Rend Collective, Ledger, Newsong, Hollyn, Dan Bremnes, Ty Brasel, Manic Drive, speakers Greg Stier and Zane Black, and Adam Agee.
Jam Nation doors open at 3:30 p.m., general admission at 5 p.m.; a $15 donation is collected at the door.
The ticketing model has long been one of Winter Jam’s calling cards — no advance tickets, just a modest suggested donation at the door, which keeps the tour accessible to families and youth groups across the region. The Mitchell Center, the University of South Alabama’s arena, regularly draws touring acts to Mobile, and Winter Jam’s stop has become a fixture of the venue’s early-year calendar, pulling crowds from across the Gulf Coast.
Newsboys United anchors the bill, reuniting the band’s classic and current members, while Mandisa and Danny Gokey bring mainstream crossover credibility from their seasons on television singing competitions. The lineup’s range — from rock to pop to hip-hop, with speakers Greg Stier and Zane Black addressing the youth audience — has made Winter Jam as much a youth ministry event as a concert, and church groups from across south Alabama routinely organize bus trips to the stop.
Abba Shrine Craft & Attic Show — Jan. 19–20, Mobile
The Abba Shrine Craft & Attic Show runs Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Admission is $3, and donating a new toy earns a door-prize chance (one per toy), with donations supporting the Masonic Alabama Grandlodge’s free child ID program. Concessions will be available; booth information is available from Elsie Davis at 251-895-3821.
Shrine craft shows are a winter staple across the Gulf Coast, combining a marketplace of handmade goods, vintage finds and attic treasures with fundraising for the Shrine’s charitable work. The toy donation angle ties this year’s show to the Masonic child ID program, which provides families with free identification materials for their children — a service designed to help in emergencies.
For vendors, the two-day format across a weekend draws serious browsers as well as casual shoppers, and the modest admission price has kept the show a family tradition for decades. Shriners International’s chapter model means proceeds support the organization’s fraternal and charitable operations, including the well-known Shriners Hospitals for Children network that serves pediatric patients regardless of their families’ ability to pay.
Italian Cheese & Wine Event — Jan. 20
The Cheese Cottage pairs Italian cheeses with wines from the same regions for an afternoon of guided tastings from 2 to 4 p.m. Tickets must be purchased in advance through thecheesecottagellc.com. The covered outdoor event is held rain or shine.
The regional pairing approach — matching each cheese with a wine from the same part of Italy — gives the tasting a narrative structure that generic pairings lack. Guided tastings of this kind have become a signature offering for specialty cheese shops, blending education with entertainment in a two-hour format that works for date afternoons, group outings and gift recipients alike.
For vendors and attendees alike, the weekend timing matters: the Saturday session runs a full eight hours, giving exhibitors the sustained traffic that one-evening markets cannot, while the Sunday close at 4 p.m. leaves room for church schedules and afternoon family time. Concessions on site make it easy to spend half a day without leaving, and the door-prize structure rewards donors in a way that keeps the toy bin full through both days.
Advance-purchase tickets make planning simple for organizers, and the covered outdoor setting means January’s famously variable Gulf Coast weather will not derail the event. January afternoons in south Alabama often land in the mild zone — a far cry from the winter events in most of the country — which is part of why the region’s outdoor event calendar keeps humming through the winter months.
Why January Matters on the Local Calendar
The breadth of the early-2019 lineup says something about how south Alabama’s event economy works. The region’s mild winters — January highs in Mobile typically run well above what much of the country endures — allow an outdoor art walk, a covered outdoor tasting and a two-day craft show to sit comfortably alongside an indoor arena concert and an academic forum on the same month’s calendar.
Each event also serves a different slice of the community. First Friday feeds Fairhope’s identity as an arts town and its downtown merchants. The community engagement forum builds the university-community partnerships that health research depends on. Winter Jam draws thousands of young people and families from a multi-county radius. The Shrine show supports fraternal charities while giving bargain hunters and craft lovers a weekend destination. The cheese and wine afternoon speaks to the area’s growing appetite for culinary experiences.
Together they illustrate the range of institutions — from a city arts council to a university to a Shrine chapter to a specialty food shop — that quietly produce south Alabama’s community life. January, often a dead month elsewhere, functions here as a warm-up act for the heavy spring festival season that follows, when Mardi Gras season takes over downtown Mobile and the Eastern Shore’s calendar fills through azalea season.
Planning Your Month
For residents mapping out the first weeks of the year: the art walk is the easiest entry point, free and open, running 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 4 from the Eastern Shore Art Center, with details available at 251-928-2228. The forum requires registration for a full-day program from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the USA Student Center Ballroom. Winter Jam’s general admission begins at 5 p.m. at the Mitchell Center, with the $15 door donation. The Shrine show runs the weekend of Jan. 19-20, and the cheese and wine event requires advance tickets through thecheesecottagellc.com for the 2 p.m. Jan. 20 start.
Whether the draw is art, music, scholarship, shopping or food, south Alabama’s new year opens with a calendar that offers something nearly every weekend — a reminder that the region’s community institutions don’t hibernate in January. They set the table for the year ahead.
The Mitchell Center stop also underscores Mobile’s role as the Gulf Coast’s mid-size concert market — close enough to Pensacola, Biloxi and the Eastern Shore suburbs to pull regionally, and equipped with an arena that national tours route between New Orleans and Atlanta. When a tour like Winter Jam commits to a Mobile date, it validates the city’s draw across south Alabama and northwest Florida, and the resulting crowd spills into downtown restaurants and businesses on a Sunday night when activity would otherwise be quiet.
