Take a stroll in Downtown Colorado Springs and you’ll find an arts community that’s growing brighter, larger and more diverse. Downtown Ventures’ Art on the Streets program is transforming blank walls into eye-catching murals while sculptures materialize on street corners and medians. If your favorite art is food, you’ll find no shortage of creative eateries to dine at.
A program of the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region, Arts Month is a Swiss Army™ knife of arts awareness, advocacy and resources for creatives and fans alike that sheds light on local creative industries. While COPPR’s efforts span El Paso and Teller counties, a vast distance for sure, collaboration with the Creative District and local artists enables Downtown Colorado Springs to become a prime locus of Arts Month on display. There, the red carpet is being rolled out with some of their biggest creative events and collaborations. Along Downtown sidewalks, banners feature Arts Month by highlighting local art and creatives.
The theme this year? “Unify your world with the arts.”
“The arts bring people together in ways that are unique to the art scene,” says Dylan Craddock, Program Manager of Creative Economy at COPPR. “We really see it as how the arts can improve community health, dialogue and engagement. When you’re seeing a show, that’s a communal experience. When you’re going to an art exhibit, you might be confronted with some new ideas that make you pause and think and start conversations in different ways.”
“The cool thing about Arts Month to me is that it’s for everybody,” says Jess Preble, gallery director for the Cottonwood Center for the Arts. “It’s not just for artists. It’s for people who love art or people who are interested in the arts, or people who didn’t even know about our creative community here in town.”
While a state designation of a local creative economy may not manifest itself in the same way an art gallery or a climbable tire caterpillar artwork might, it’s been an important ingredient for success Downtown. Craddock explains that creative industries generated $16.9 billion in Colorado, supporting 102,383 jobs across the state. (Manitou Springs is also home to a Colorado Creative District, which it received in 2017.) Through the state’s Creative District program, Downtown receives financial, promotional and logistical support while also serving as a local co-op for participating creatives. Now in 2024, the Downtown Colorado Springs creative district is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
The cool thing about arts month to me Is that it’s for everybody.
-Jess Preble
Even on the district’s fringe, Cottonwood shares in the excitement. A multi-function creative space and workspace featuring 130 artists and 70 galleries and a schedule of art classes, the venue is inviting people to their main gallery this October for “Bump in the Night”, an homage to “classic horror tropes, monsters and beasts, hauntings and Lovecraftian visions of what lies beyond the borders of normalcy.”
As we chat, Cottonwood’s events director, Samantha Abbott, brings out a sculpture from that new exhibit: the evil feline Church from the horror film “Pet Semetary.”
“Being a part of the Downtown Creative District is kind of like being a part of an extended family, because we all support each other and [all of us] will tell you to go see each other,” says Preble. “What COPPR does with Arts Month is they’re like, ‘Hey, we have this fabulous, thriving Creative District. We have this fabulous, thriving community of artists. Let’s push them out there more and introduce them to you and make a big deal about it, so it gets people’s attention that maybe live in Stetson Hills.’”
Arts month is a swiss army knife of arts awareness, advocacy and resources for creatives
-Nick Raven
A few blocks away, it’s a warm, glowing morning at Lulu’s Downtown when we meet with Michelle Winchell, executive director of Downtown Ventures and manager of the creative district. Having moved from Manitou, Lulu’s not only provides Downtown with a mid-sized performing arts venue to complement the Pikes Peak Center, but an existing solid reputation along with it.
“We want to promote the good work that our organizations are doing,” says Winchell. “We have amazing businesses in the Creative District, encompassing everything from our galleries, with lots of fun First Friday openings in October, to places like Lulu’s and our culinary scene, too.”
Downtown is no stranger to chain restaurants for the safe and predictable fare. An old-fashioned McDonalds sits on Wahsatch Avenue alongside a Taco Bell and across the street from a Wendy’s and a Domino’s Pizza. But in the creative district, food can be so much more: it can be art.
“From conceiving of and meticulously constructing a recipe to beautifully presenting it on the plate or in the glass, the artist’s touch underpins the culinary world,” says Matthew Schniper, local food critic (and former Colorado Springs Indy co-worker) tells the Pikes Peak Bulletin. “Nowhere in Colorado Springs is this more on display than in Downtown, home to the largest concentration of independent food and drink spots in Southern Colorado.”
Newer culinary arrivals like Night Ramen and Sushi Row spring up quickly in conversations — joining local favorites such as Red Gravy, Ephemera and The Green Line Grill — and people are paying attention. It’s no surprise then that the Downtown Partnership awarded Schniper their Downtown Star Award this year “for outstanding contributions to the vibrancy of Downtown Colorado Springs” across two decades of reporting.
Arts Month in Downtown features no shortage of events for casual fans of the arts and their families to collaborators and creatives, all of which COPPR has sorted together at ArtsOctober.com. (COPPR also manages PeakRadar.com where local arts events can be found year-round.) There are ghost tours, parties and gallery debuts while Colorado College continues to serve as the base for the well-attended Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival. Now in its 37th year, RMWF continues to hold the title of the longest-running women’s film festival in North America.
Art happens Downtown during all months of the calendar, but it’s Arts Month where the banner organizers and organizations lock in and lift the community. But through all this optimism, there’s still a subtle jittery nervousness among those we spoke with in the weeks ahead of a presidential election. No one’s letting it get to them, though: Downtown has no time for that.
“I think one of the things that art does is it connects us to one another,” says Winchell. “It makes space for empathy, for us to understand someone else’s experience in the world. The arts are a powerful tool for reminding us that we have a lot of shared values; we have a lot of shared concerns; we all care about the community. We might see it in different ways, but it can be something that kind of helps people realize that they share a lot.”
Cottonwood’s Abbott says they’re doubling down on the optimism during Arts Month.
“[The] arts are a great way to process your anxiety about the election, or your frustration about it, or any other feelings you may be having,” she says.
Invoking Pablo Picasso’s quote that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” True North member and local artist Becca Day explains that art is therapeutic.
“When you engage in arts, whether it’s making it or viewing it, it provides some relief,” she says.
[the] Arts are a great way to pro-cess your anxiety about the election, or your frustration about it, or any other feelings you may be having.”
-Michelle Winchell
