By Taylor Adams Cogan
Thirty years ago, a 13-year-old girl growing up in Euless got her first taste of Deep Ellum. It wouldn’t just be the start of a fun time in the entertainment district, but the beginning of a relationship between person and place that would flourish into a community leader.
An art walk first pulled Breonny Lee to the neighborhood as a preteen, but swing dance lessons at Sons of Hermann Hall the next year made her a regular. It was an easy transition to open mic poetry night at Insomnia Coffee Bar. When the Door opened in 1998, she — along with plenty of other people too young for the clubs — made that a go-to.
“Age 14, 15 was really when I got introduced to Deep Ellum. To this alternative kind of homeschool kid, Deep Ellum was the first place I felt like I really found my people,” she says.
Decades before she’d become the president of the Deep Ellum Community Association (DECA), she was growing up in the venues.
“I kept going down there for the same things, then the clubs opened to me, and I went down there for dancing and live shows — the kind of stuff everybody goes to,” she says.
School and starting a family pulled her away in the mid-2000s, but she was back to being a regular face in the neighborhood by 2009. As Dallas increasingly embraced its art scene in the coming years, she jumped into volunteering for events throughout the city, which often led her back to her stomping grounds of Deep Ellum.
“I was volunteering for ArtLoveMagic and other art walks, Art and Coffee, underground art shows, and a bunch of them were in Deep Ellum,” she says. “And then, I was volunteering for the Deep Ellum Art Festival.”
There’s no denying that this was a fun time in the neighborhood. In 2011, businesses were making their homes on the streets, drawing more people to them throughout the day and night.
“2010-2014 was kind of an exciting time, a new frontier,” she says. “It felt like the neighborhood was headed in the right direction: we were having more venues come in, more restaurants come in, lots of art happenings… that was a time.”
“We did a show in 2013 called Urban Legends, and we had over 1,000 people come out,” she says. “It was the first time in years Main Street was full. We took over five venues for one night, and people were walking back and forth across the street for different themed art shows in each venue.
“It was an exciting time because it was still kind of a blank canvas; money, interest, and excitement were building around the neighborhood. It was an exciting time.”
Her dedication to the art events was noticed. In 2014, she was brought onto the staff of the art festival and began volunteering for the DECA board.
“My role was a little bit artist, and sometimes, I was just a general helper. But most of what I was doing was producing shows,” she says.
That “little bit artist” isn’t so little. If you walked through Deep Ellum in 2025, you would have seen her work. The light pole banners with those smiling, inquisitive, or funny expressions caught on the faces of Deep Ellum People were captured by this professional photographer.
She’s also a photography-based mixed media artist. Needless to say, she was fitting in just fine with the neighborhood.
It was also in 2014 when Breonny’s boyfriend took his own life. The devastating loss was supported by DECA, which planned a large public service for her partner.
“DECA took the reins and planned that. They were very supportive in that time,” she says.
When she first joined the board, she served as a liaison between DECA and Uplift Luna Preparatory School, aiming to get the kids more involved in the community.
“My mission there for bridging the school and community didn’t pan out into much, but I did get more involved volunteering for the DECA board and DECA projects,” she says.
By 2015, she was officially seated as a voting member of the board. It wouldn’t be long before longtime member and board president Jim Rogers asked her to serve as his vice president. After Rogers passed away in February 2021, the mantle fell naturally to her. She has served as DECA president since then.
For someone who loves the neighborhood and the work DECA does, the role can be consuming. She may take on more projects than ideal, but she keeps pushing through, encouraging others to use their talents.
“It’s exciting to give people a project and watch them flourish, and making connections with businesses in the area. Shepherding people is the fun part,” she says.
Her role also has her working closely with the Deep Ellum Foundation, the nonprofit organization that manages the neighborhood’s Public Improvement District. The two organizations’ relationship has evolved over the years, and today they largely complement each other.
“Watching the Foundation grow to do more, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of maintaining a friendly cooperative symbiotic relationship where we agree on most goals for the neighborhood, an overarching kind of theme of what the neighborhood needs, and then cooperate on a lot of stuff. And then there are times when we don’t agree. I think having those balanced voices is a good thing for the neighborhood.”
A tremendous part of her role takes her back to her roots: the Deep Ellum Community Arts Fair each spring. A month from now, artists, patrons, and musicians will fill the streets for this event that takes countless hours of volunteer work and produces an unforgettable weekend.
“We piggybacked on the legacy of the Deep Ellum Arts Festival, riding their coattails. We would not have been able to do it without that,” she says. “But what we have been able to do with volunteers and a shoestring budget is remarkable: This brings in over tens of thousands of attendees, it’s run by volunteers, run by the community. It feels truly community, which is something we hear from participating artists, who might not be from here, that it feels authentic and organic.
“It feels like Deep Ellum: It doesn’t feel like an art festival plopped down on a neighborhood, but one grown up out of a community. I’ve had artists say some of the sweetest, most encouraging things: ‘I want to grow old with this festival.’ ‘This is my favorite art festival, I want to be here for the long haul—it’s crazy to me, how many say this is their favorite arts festival.”
Breonny has both enjoyed and supported the neighborhood for decades. There’s no doubt she deserves some rest, but she keeps showing up.
“The reason that I’m here still, that I don’t skip out, is that I hope that we would preserve our history and culture, and not bulldoze it all. That we would continue to grow community and be a safe harbor for arts and culture, for artists and musicians, that we honor the legacy of art and music, especially since it’s the reason why Deep Ellum exists.
“It’s not just a tip of a hat to our history in a museum, saying here’s what we used to be. It’s woven into the daily fabric of the neighborhood.”
