Aurora Arts Festival looks to tag itself as a major draw across metro Denver

AURORA | There’s a two-stage, 50-artist, beer garden-boasting hurricane swirling into the Aurora Cultural Arts District this weekend.

The annual Aurora Arts Festival is invading about one square block of north Aurora June 27 with a seriously beefed-up lineup of visual artists, vendors and musicians.

Now in its fourth year, the free event is set to feature more than 70 vendors — about 50 of whom are artists and craftspeople — 13 musical acts on two different stages, and a slew of food, craft brews and kids activities, according to Tracy Weil, managing director of the ACAD. Weil said the festival is meant to highlight the city’s diversity as well as act as a who’s who of Aurora bohemians.

 “We had a great festival the past couple of years and we’ve been growing the event, but we thought it was time to really put ourselves on the map,” Weil said of the event’s increased size in 2015. “We want the ACAD to be a place for people to be involved and interact with a lot of the art going on in Aurora. The district wants to be that hub where, if people want to be involved with the arts, they know they can come here.”

The budget for this year’s festival was about $12,000 — a total nearly double what it was last year, according to Weil. He said that city council allotted $2,500 of city funds for the event, but that the majority of the financial resources came from vendor income and sponsorship.

The city has been systematically doubling down on investment within ACAD in recent years, adding several theaters and a bundle of gallery space to its umbrella of owned properties. Most recently, the city’s Art In Public Places Program single-handedly funded an eight-story, $25,000 mural on the Fletcher Gardens Apartments set to be completed later this summer by Denver-based design firm Like Minded Productions. Like Minded artists and owners Jonathan Lamb and Michael Ortiz will be working on the hulking piece on Emporia Street throughout the day of the Arts Festival. Last year, Weil and other ACAD officials identified about 50 blank walls across the district primed for more murals in the coming years.

The Aurora Arts Festival

10 a.m. to 8 p.m. June 27 at Fletcher Plaza, 9898 E. Colfax Ave. Free.

Call 303-344-2223 or visit www.auroraculture.org for more information and a full schedule of events.

“The most fun has to be the mural going up, that’s just going to knock your socks off,” said Aurora City Councilwoman Sally Mounier. “I think that we’re expecting to see between 4,000 to 5,000 people, which will break all of the records we’ve ever seen. When you think about Original Aurora and how we’re dressing it up, with the mural, the dancers, the five theaters, I mean, come on, what more could you want?”

The simple fact that the ACAD is able to host such a large event in its very heart, just a paint brush’s toss from hundreds of homes, is a testament to the area’s progress, according to Satya Wimbish, vice president of the ACAD board and owner of the Trash As Art collective.

“I know there are other events that go on with the city like those at the Municipal Center, but to have it right in the heart of Aurora in Original Aurora, downtown Aurora, to be able to bring it to the people down there, is great,” she said. “Even in Denver, when you have festival in Civic Center Park, it’s not in the heart where people have houses and really live, like we have here.”

This year’s festival theme of ReUp — a combination of recycled and up-cycled art — draws heavily on Wimbish’s work at Trash as Art, which focuses on re-purposing discarded items to make art.

Wimbish added that the district leveraged the connections of Carolyn Bartels, ACAD’s development director, to woo musical acts with larger appeal in an attempt to cater to a wider audience.

“We worked on getting more metro-area bands, not just small community acts, but acts that people want to come out and see,” she said. “We’re trying to really broaden our horizons.”

East Colfax’s Mu Brewery will be aiding in that broadening effort by offering craft beverages in a beer garden beside one of the two stages.

“The festival represents just a huge draw for people to come down to our area and show off what we’ve been working on,” said Nathan Flatland, president of Mu. “The Cherry Creek Arts Festival started out as small as we did in our first year so the fact that we’re growing and getting bigger is exciting — hopefully one day, us, too will be taking over a couple blocks.”