Audio By Carbonatix
Growing pains are to be expected in any endeavor as ambitious as the Celebrate Colorado Arts Festival, but no one could have predicted the problems that occurred during last year’s sophomore event at the Denver Performing Arts Complex: A bit of culture clash — concurrent high school graduation ceremonies in the Buell Theatre — not only filled parking lots to capacity, but forced a public lockout of the festival’s touted indoor exhibits while ceremonial attendees queued up outdoors among the galleria’s display areas.
That, along with certain economic concerns, paved the way toward a friendlier locale, notes festival director Brian Nelson. Having made it through the terrible twos, the festival will be back this year at the Denver Pavilions, located right on the 16th Street Mall. Whatever worked well before — a celebratory mood, the attention to diversity, variety and quality, lots of hands-on activities to draw the public into the art-making process — is back, though some of it’s been amped up a notch to match the center-of-the-world ambience of the retail center. That voltage translates into more high-profile entertainment, including such musical acts as Crash Test Dummies and the Nelsons, comedian P.J. Moore and performance-art troupe Slam.
Nelson hopes the change of venue will increase foot traffic as well as keep people at the festival longer. “It’s an easier environment,” he says. “People can come down, see the show, go away and maybe eat at one of the restaurants nearby, and then come back. That helps me with the whole experience I’m trying to create.” That would include affordability, for one thing: The fest allows artists to sell secondary work – art people can buy without emptying their bank accounts — along with their masterpieces. And having fun, Nelson adds, is also paramount: It’s the element that’s made the downtown mall and LoDo two of Denver’s most popular tourist attractions. Where there’s fun, there are happy people, and, in the best of all worlds, that’s what festivals are for.
