No local festival directly showcases the creative community more perfectly than Create Denver Week, an annual city-sponsored May series of cultural events that includes the flagship Create Denver Expo, a purposeful gathering of minds all marching to different drummers. The rest of it operates like a huge invitation to Denverites to come out and appreciate our rugged art individualists on a grand scale. Artists, crafters, fashion designers, dance and theater performers, musicians and curators are all represented during CDW’s four-day run, which begins tonight from 7 to 10 p.m. in a vacant space at the Spire, 14th and Champa streets, with LAUNCH — Opening Night Celebration of New Ideas, featuring product launches by small, local, creative businesses, all in the shadow of a bicycle-inspired kinetic sculpture built by Matt Scobey expressly for the event.

You can see where this is going: Tomorrow, back at the Spire, a roundtable panel will discuss the part technology will play in the economy of the future at 6 p.m., and at 8:30 p.m., crowds will converge in the street for a spectacular evening of outdoor artist video screenings and 3D projections at the Colorado Convention Center and Denver Performing Arts Complex. The Create Denver Expo, with its impressive roster of workshops and presenters, follows on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Wellington Webb Municipal Building; registration, available online through May 11 or at the door, is $5. In the evening, a live poster auction will unfold at 6 p.m. at 13th Avenue and Sherman Street; still later, an after-party will rage at Beauty Bar. And on Sunday, Fashion Denver and the Denver Handmade Alliance throw their heads together for Your Sunday Best, a free joint celebration and sale at the Grant-Humphreys Mansion (see entry for Sunday, May 15).

It’s a lot to take in, but most of it is free, though some events do require advance reservations. For more information, visit www.denvergov.org/CreateDenver.
May 12-15, 2011