North End arts fair celebrates diversity

In its third year, the North End Urban Arts Festival is finding its stride.

The festival, which takes place Saturday evening at NoMar International Market, 204 E. 21st St., celebrates cultural diversity through music, food and art vendors.

This year, it features a full lineup of live music, including nationally known rapper XV – who is originally from Wichita and occasionally raps about the town.

The festival highlights more than 30 artists, crafters and local boutiques that will be peddling their wares – and most of those are artists of color, according to Armando Minjarez, one of the festival’s organizers.

“It’s become a platform for young artists of color to have a platform to showcase their talents,” Minjarez said. “Our own process of reaching out to artists, vendors and musicians is one that is specifically to highlight artists of color … and also create an atmosphere that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone.”

When the festival was first conceived three years ago, its organizers thought about holding it downtown, Minjarez said. They decided it belonged in the “North End,” one of Wichita’s most culturally diverse neighborhoods.

“It’s important to make clear that we’re not bringing any vibrancy to the neighborhood – that is already there,” Minjarez said. “We’re trying to make sure it is a platform for the neighborhood and not the other way – the neighborhood is not a platform for us.”

New this year is a live “graffiti battle” all evening.

“They’re going to pull out a word from a hat, and whatever word it is, you have to tag it in whatever style you choose,” Minjarez said.

Attendees will vote on the best graffiti art, and the winner will receive a gift basket.

Civic responsibility in a mixtape

Marrice Anthony, a rapper with local hip-hop collective Lewelheds, is concerned young people of color won’t bother to vote in November.

Minjarez, one of the leaders of the ICT Army of Artists, shares that concern.

The Seed House (La Casa de la Semilla) received a $3,600 grant from Citizen University’s Joy of Voting program (sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation) in June to create a voting-oriented creative project. Locally, the Arts Council and the Kansas Health Foundation also have contributed to the project.

At the North End Urban Arts Festival on Saturday, part of that project will come to fruition in the form of a free mixtape that promotes voting.

Lewelheds has three original tracks on the mixtape.

“The idea is to get people excited about voting again,” Minjarez said. “If it feels kind of stagnant or people feel kind of disillusioned and not really excited about elections, it’s more like, ‘Oh crap, it’s election time.’”

How, exactly, does a pro-voting song sound?

“We really just wanted to have something that could be interpreted any way you wanted it to but go along with the theme of trying to make your life better,” Anthony said. “You can make your life better by voting. That was the main goal – just to uplift the youth.”

Links to download the free mixtape, released through This Ain’t Heaven Recording Concern, will be released as part of Final Friday on the Seed House’s Facebook page, Minjarez said.

On Saturday, fliers with the link to download the mixtape will be distributed.

“The follow-up of the festival,” as Minjarez calls it, will be on Oct. 13, when the Seed House and Lewelheds will bring an assembly to Wichita North High School, presenting about voting.

The Seed House also plans to bring a large group of voters to the Sedgwick County Courthouse on Oct. 25, when early voting opens in Sedgwick County, Minjarez said.

“We want everyone to feel hopeful about the future when they listen to these songs,” Anthony said. “We want people to feel uplifted.”

If you can’t make it out to the North End Urban Arts Festival, the mixtape will be available on the Seed House’s Facebook page (The Seed House-La Casa de la Semilla).

This story was originally published September 29, 2016 at 11:15 AM with the headline "North End arts fair celebrates diversity."