By Tom Bensen
First Night Missoula: A History
The New Year’s Eve festival of the arts known as First Night began in 1975 in Boston, Massachusetts, as a project of local citizens who had originally met to plan a celebration of the nation’s Bicentennial the following year. Their desire was to re-energize the downtown area, and what emerged was an annual event based on four guiding principles: Community, Celebration, New Year’s Eve, and Art. First and foremost, this was seen as a community-building project, uniting the community through planning, volunteer efforts, fundraising, and offering a performance opportunity for local artists. Second, this event was imagined as a celebration of all that the city and its citizens had to offer. The city itself was the stage: churches, coffeehouses, dance halls, outdoor venues involving the waterfront or city parks. New Year’s Eve was the chosen date as it is a time of remembrance, reflection, and a hopeful future. Over the years this holiday had developed a bad reputation as a night of excessive drinking, leading many citizens to avoid going out on New Year’s Eve. Thus, the organizers initially refused to sell alcohol in order to make the participants feel safe, making the event more inclusive by attracting more participants. Finally, this was to be a celebration of art, highlighting the individual and collective creativity within the community. To emphasize the importance of the arts in our society, all artists were paid.
First Night Boston enjoyed immediate success, and within a few years other communities in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states were holding their own First Night celebrations. First Nights began sprouting all through the country, as well as Canada, Europe, and New Zealand. Missoula celebrated its initial First Night on December 31, 1994. Graham Dewyea, a University of Montana graduate student, had been familiar with the event from his hometown in Burlington, Vermont, and he thought that Missoula was a perfect community for such an event. He spent a year or so convincing community leaders of his vision, winning the support of then Mayor Dan Kemmis, as well as other community leaders, business owners and local artists. Michael Marsolek of the Drum Brothers was on the original planning committee, as was Anne Guest of the Missoula Parking Commission, Kim Kuethe of the popular Mammyth Bakery, and several others. Before the year was over, First Night Missoula became a 501-c-3 organization. Despite the brutal cold of that evening, thousands turned up to celebrate and take pride in our hometown. First Night Missoula became an instant tradition – a celebration of this place, the passage of time, and our many inspiring artists.
Graham Dewyea served as the organization’s executive director for two festivals, until he moved out of state. Jennifer Gibson followed as director and was at the helm for the “Snowstorm of ‘96”, which shut down western Montana for most of December. In the last days of the month, however, it warmed up enough for people to emerge from their homes, and again this event brought the community together in celebration. Despite the weather, nearly 7,000 turned out that night, making First Night Missoula the largest one-day arts festival in the state.
Jennifer Gibson left First Night to study medicine (Dr. Gibson-Snyder has been an OBGYN in Missoula for several years), and I became director in the Fall of 1997, riding the crest of the First Night wave for several years, through Y2K and beyond! In that time the event expanded beyond the Downtown to include the University of Montana venues, Southgate Mall,
Glacier Ice Rink, Ogren Park, and additional downtown locations. Each year First Night showcased roughly 100 events and activities in over 30 venues from noon until midnight. Nearly 300 people volunteered to help with set-up, tear-down, or to serve as venue hosts. Ice carving on the Court House lawn attracted viewers throughout the day. The Wilma Theatre, Dennison Theatre, MCT Center for the Performing Arts, and all the rooms at the University Center were regularly filled to capacity. Celebrate 2000, a national organization in collaboration with the Missoulian, sponsored the Millennial event, as thousands gathered in the newly remodeled Adams Center, with hundreds of balloons dropping from the ceiling at midnight as the Ed Norton Big Band played “Auld Lang Syne.”
In 2004 I was offered the position of Executive Director of the Missoula Cultural Council (now Arts Missoula), and I left First Night Missoula…briefly. John Engen, then a member of the First Night board of directors, suggested a partnership between the two organizations, and that evolved into a merger, with the Cultural Council becoming the parent organization and host of the event. In the years that followed, First Night attracted many artists from outside western Montana. Musicians from Bozeman, Billings, Spokane, Denver, and a magician from San Francisco were among the bigger acts. Taking Missoula’s lead, First Night celebrations occurred in Kalispell, Great Falls, and Spokane. The First Night Idol high school singing contest became the biggest single event-within-the event, so big that one year we received a call from American Idol corporate headquarters telling us we could no longer use the word “Idol” anymore, or else face legal consequences. While admittedly intimidated by the threat of lawyers, I also considered that as a sign of success. That event, now called Spotlight, is still a major highlight of evening.
First Night continued to provide the community with a large-scale New Year’s Eve festival of the arts for several years, celebrating its 25th Anniversary on December 31, 2018. COVID forced us to present it as a virtual, yet the opening of the Missoula Public Library in 2021 gave new energy and opportunity for First Night, as seen by its rebranding as Missoula on Main, with the addition of new downtown hotels, and a refocus on venues along Main Street.
In 2025, the event starts to spread back out across the community and now over two days, inviting an even more accessible and inclusive event.
Throughout its history, First Night Missoula has never lost sight of its original core values: Community, Celebration, New Year’s Eve, and Art. This year the name has changed, but the mission remains the same, and the support of our community members, as well as the artistic talent located in this valley, continue to ensure its success.