What will the First Annual Las Vegas Peace Festival entail?
We’ve got artists that are going to be painting outdoors plus inside the Box Office. I’ve got 29 vendors that are totally confirmed, ranging from natural health-care products to the Citizens Police Academy. We’ve got an outdoor stage with six bands, an indoor stage area with four bands and another stage indoors for a free-for-all, spoken-word poetry slam. Food and beverages will be sold; we’re going to have a big bouncing castle for the kids. And admission is totally free.
What is the overriding goal?
I founded the Project April 10, so it’s fairly new, but since then we’ve done a lot of neat things with the community. The Festival is just the first big one that we’re trying to promote. What we’re trying to do is create a series of multicultural festivals that are going to support the communities grown through art, education and health and wellness areas, basically becoming a nucleus where different organizations and businesses that are devoted and committed to any kind of inner peace for the community can get together and share that with other people. We’re all going toward the same goal, so why not get together and share that?
The official literature promises that “peace will be raining down upon attendees.” We’re in a desert climate, you know.
The idea is to water the desert. Every time I drive to Red Rock or just around neighborhoods, I see these little dried-up cracks, but there’s still growth coming out. I think that’s how some people look at the city—Sin City, this conglomeration of big business with no heart and no soul—but there is so much spirit and love and peace that wants to burst out. If we can just shower people with a little drop of something, it’s going to spark a little growth.
First Annual Las Vegas Peace Festival. October 13, 4-11 p.m., free. The Box Office, 202-5029.