The city of Glendale, the Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance and Local First Arizona are teaming up to bring an immersive experience to the West Valley community — the Downtown Glendale Arts & Culture Fest.
Slated for 11 a.m. to. 8 p.m. Saturday, February 4, the festival at Murphy Park features more than 70 art experiences, including cultural stage showcases, an artisan marketplace, live painting, interactive murals, food trucks, and an evening performance by fire artists Flam Chen.
Mojgan Vahabzadeh, arts and culture program manager for the city of Glendale, is looking forward to showing off what Downtown Glendale has to offer.
“We have a great, great expectation,” she says.
And with Super Bowl LVII coming to Glendale, the timing for the city to put on an event like this, for Vahabzadeh, couldn’t be better. The event is geared toward locals, but with the extra foot traffic, anyone in town at the time of the event can enjoy its wide range of entertainment options.
Vahabzadeh says the event is expected to see anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 festivalgoers.
“There are going to be tons of people coming to the Phoenix area probably a week ahead of the Super Bowl,” Vahabzadeh says. “So, the idea was we have this beautiful Downtown that has a lot of character, and it’s kind of unique, among other metro Phoenix cities. … This is a great opportunity to bring the community together to experience the arts and culture festival, as well as encourage them to go visit some of our Downtown businesses while they’re here.”
A family-friendly affair, the event will feature an artist and vendor market with numerous local artisans in fashion, food, home goods and visual arts. From there, stroll through Murphy Park and find a great handmade gift or treasure from one of the more than 50 vendors and local makers featured at the festival.
The Downtown Glendale Arts & Culture Fest will also give attendees the distinctive opportunity to engage up close and personal with artists and interactive art installations. Activities and experiences will take place throughout Murphy Park and inside participating businesses located in Downtown Glendale. Highlights include a community chalk art zone, a live paint-by-the-numbers mural with Snoodcity Artist Collective, inflatable art installations, youth painting activities, VESSEL Spectrum Performing Arts, and a musical instrument petting zoo with Sankofa Island Magic.
The E. Lowell Rogers amphitheater in Murphy Park will be transformed for the day with exciting cultural music, drumming, dance and circus arts that will start at 11 a.m. and wrap up at 8 p.m. with a performance from Flam Chem.
Flam Chem, who will debut a new original experience, “Dance On Water — A Journey of Refuge, Restoration, and Renaissance,” utilizes performances that combine daredevil acrobatics with a mastery of air and fire arts.
Vahabzadeh is confident the immersive group will put on a fantastic show. The group has performed for such luminaries as director Tim Burton and Spider-Man and Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee.
They also host and produce international performance artists and collaborate on many projects throughout the year.
“They’re really kind of a unique group,” Vahabzadeh says. “They’ve been around for a while, but they’re very larger than life; they have a giant presence. They create a really cool spectacle whenever they’re performing. They’re kind of mesmerizing. They do a lot of elaborate costuming, and their choreography is really unique. So, I think that that whole combination of fire arts and circus performance is really something that appeals to the crowd.”
Many cultures are set to be represented with the performances at the amphitheater. Lori German, communication program manager for the city of Glendale, says that was purposeful.
“We understand kind of the value of what arts and culture brings to a community,” German says. “So, as we continue to grow, I think those are one of the things that we’re definitely focusing on, is placemaking is very important. … It’s that kind of connection between placemaking and the diverse community that we do live in to make sure that we’re highlighting that.”
The city’s main partner for the event, the Southern Arizona Arts & Cultural Alliance, was responsible for putting the expansive list of artists and vendors together.
Kate Marquez, executive director for the Southern Arizona Arts & Culture Alliance, says this event fell perfectly in line with the organization’s goals. The nonprofit is dedicated to the creation, preservation and advancement of the arts.
“We work in any capacity that any community has an intent or desire to invest in artists, the creative process, helping artists make a living by selling their work,” Marquez says. “That is what interested us, of course, is the fact that they were interested in investing in that type of project.”
A nuance to the festival is the Downtown Business Passport. Headed up by Local First Arizona, the passport will serve to highlight businesses in Downtown Glendale. The guide will be made available at the festival and will feature locally owned restaurants, retail shops, area attractions and experiences.
“The Downtown area is just filled with a robust makeup of diverse set of businesses, everything from local coffee shops to antique stores, boutiques, restaurants. You name it, they’ve got it,” says Thomas Barr, vice president of business development for Local First Arizona. “So, we’ve been going in and just cultivating relationships with them.”
With the Downtown Reinvestment Project soon coming to Downtown Glendale, running the event again in the next couple of years may be difficult. But depending on how this one goes, it will certainly not be out of the realm of possibility to see the Downtown Glendale Arts & Culture Fest again.
“Definitely, that is something that we will look to doing back in future years, given how successful it will be,” Vahabzadeh says.
Downtown Glendale Arts & Culture Fest
WHEN: 11 a.m. to. 8 p.m. Saturday, February 4
WHERE: Murphy Park, 5850 W. Glendale Avenue, Glendale
COST: Free
INFO: glendaleaz.com
