Have you ever noticed street performers when walking down the 16th Street Mall in Denver or during First Friday art walks hosted throughout the city? Did you know there used to be an international festival dedicated to street performers at Union Station?
It was called Union Station’s Buskerfest, and it was started by late Denver preservationist Dana Crawford in 2015. The festival attracted performers from different countries and drew 15,000 attendees, according to its organizers.
One CPR listener asked Colorado Wonders: Whatever happened to that festival?
First, we needed to figure out exactly what counts as a busker, which is a fancy, mainly British word for street performers who work for tips from passersby. A lot of people hear the word busker and probably think of a guy playing on a street corner with an open guitar case. But busking actually covers a wide range of entertainers.
“We have live artists. I am trying to think of all the unique ones I've seen,” said Sharon Alton, who oversees events and development for the Downtown Denver Partnership. “There's a typewriter poet, there's jugglers, there's unicycling. There's a guy who can get in a box that's 2 feet by 2 feet. He can condense his body to get in there … There's some acrobatics.”
The Union Station Buskerfest was canceled in 2020 because of COVID. Busking generally disappeared around downtown Denver during the pandemic.
“I think it slowed down or became non-existent during COVID, just because there weren't that many people downtown. And then with the construction, there also weren't that many people downtown,” Alton said.
Buskerfest never returned to downtown Denver, but the city is encouraging buskers to come out and perform now that construction on the 16th Street Mall is finished. To that end, the Downtown Denver Partnership is working with Denver Arts and Venues to pay street performers to set up on the mall. That’s in addition to the unpaid gigs that anybody can do as long as they get a permit, which are free.
“You do need to get a permit, just saying you'll abide by the rules and the sound regulations for the city of Denver. And then you can go anywhere, however many days, however long during the day you want along 16th Street,” Alton said.
It would be difficult to revive the Buskerfest festival because of the cost, she said.
“It’s really difficult monetarily to produce a free public event,” Alton said.
Union Station boosters would like to honor Crawford’s vision by having buskers perform at an event like Dana Day, a celebration on Larimer Square that paid homage to the renowned preservationist this summer, said Union Station spokesperson Julie Dunn. But it’s too early to say what next year’s event will look like, she said.
There are still plenty of buskers outside of downtown, like the parking lot at Red Rocks. Still, downtown officials are doing everything they can to bring buskers back in full force. For instance, there will be buskers enlisted to perform at the grand opening of the 16th Street Mall on Oct. 4, Alton said.
“We are definitely going to be incorporating buskers in all of our free public events that we put on,” Alton said.
Colorado Wonders
This story is part of our Colorado Wonders series, where we answer your burning questions about Colorado. Curious about something? Go to our Colorado Wonders page to ask your question or view other questions we've answered.
