(bright music) - Utah Arts Alliance's Urban Arts Festival celebrates a wide variety of art, including graffiti, skateboarding, Utah lowriders, performing arts, and more.

Derek Dyer and Kat Aleman are here to tell us more.

Hi, Derek and Kat.

Welcome.

Okay, so Derek, let's start with you.

So the Urban Arts Festival, tell us a little about how it got started and whatever you'd like.

- Yeah, so Urban Arts Festival, this is our 14th year.

So 14 years ago, we saw that there was a need in our community to really shine a light on some cultures and expressions that are maybe under represented in our community.

And so, yeah, we started out with what was just gonna be a skate deck art show, and it got out of hand, and it's turned into Utah's largest free art event.

And so now we have a lot of performers that are on different stages.

We have a lot of art; over a hundred artists/vendors.

We have a lowrider exhibit, like you said.

There's a lot of things going on at the Urban Arts Festival.

It's always a good time.

- That's huge.

And you're in The Gateway.

- And we're in The Gateway.

- Okay, got it.

Okay, so Kat, I'm coming to you for specifics, so we're gonna start with the grand finale.

- The grand finale.

Yes.

I'm super excited for the grand finale this year.

We're actually working with a lot of different organizations to kind of put the grand finale together.

So this year we wanna do the four elements of hip hop and really kind of represent what this festival is rooted in.

So imagine like a million things happening all at once that represent the elements of hip hop.

So we're gonna have a compliment battle by the Mic Masters Alliance here.

Meanwhile, over here, there's gonna be muralists that are gonna be live painting the entire thing that's going on.

We'll have hip-hop dancers also doing something as well.

We'll have some rap battles that'll also happen.

So we're basically exploding all of the elements of hip hop into one hour grand finale.

- Wow, and I know you've got some creative writing workshops and poetry and the lowriders.

- Yes, yeah.

We're going to be doing a big slam cypher with AAMP Utah, which is the alternative arts program that The Beehive does, and so we're gonna have a bunch of poets do like a big battle with each other.

And then, yeah, they're going to... We're gonna do a finale after that as well.

- It's huge.

- Yeah.

- So thank you so much for being here and telling us about it.

Thanks.

- Thanks for having us.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming Urban Arts Festival, it's July 27th and 28th at The Gateway.

Go to utaharts.org/en/urban-arts-fest.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact".

(bright music) - Local events, arts, culture.

It's what brings us together.

Hi, I'm Mary Dickson.

Here on Contact, we introduce you to local events and organizations that serve your neighborhood.

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