The Frankfort Arts Foundation presents an annual series of events: concerts, plays, poetry readings.

The Grand Theater is a historic movie theater on St. Clair Street in downtown Frankfort. The older section of the theater was built for vaudeville acts in 1910. The newer, larger part of the Grand was built in 1940 as a movie theater; it showed films until the mid-1960s. After many years of use as a real-estate office and auction house, it has recently been reclaimed as a community center for cultural events. The theater closed in January, 2007 for a full-scale renovation and is expected to open again late in 2008.

The Farnham Dudgeon Civic Center is named in honor of Farnham Dudgeon, who played an important role in the development of the Capital Plaza complex in north Frankfort. The civic center is a 10,000 square foot facility that seats 5,300 for sporting events, concerts, arts events, trade shows, and banquets.

An annual event at the civic center is the Kentucky Book Fair, which marked its 25th anniversary in 2006. According to the book fair's Web site, it "is Kentucky's premier literary event and one of the largest of its kind in the nation." It draws some 150 authors every year, and 4-5,000 patrons. The book fair donates its profits to school and public libraries throughout Kentucky.

The origins of Frankfort's Paul Sawyier Public Library date to 1906, when the Woman's Club of Frankfort started a library that was open one day a week. From the mid-1960s through 2006, the library was housed in the former Post Office building on Wapping Street. In 2005, construction began on a new, much larger facility next door. The library moved into its new quarters in November, 2006.