When Alex Buron discovered Urban Art Fest as a high school student, it felt like coming home.
The youth-organized event at the time was small enough to fit under a picnic shelter at Riverfront Park — just a few canvases of graffiti art and someone rapping.
“It just looked like a family reunion,” Buron recalled. There, he found teens from across Salem who were interested in beatboxing, hip-hop and other urban arts that rarely received much airplay in classrooms.
“They were dressed like you. They listened to the same artists as you, they know the ongoing history,” he said. In the days before Spotify, the event was a forum to swap music and share artists.
Buron is now an outreach coordinator for Latinos Unidos Siempre, which is bringing back the event — renamed the People’s Urban Art Fest — for its 10th year this Saturday, Aug. 31, at Riverfront Park from 1-8 p.m.
It’s the first Urban Art Fest held since the Covid pandemic.
The event is free and intended to empower working-class and marginalized Salem youth and families to become civically engaged and inspire them by featuring artists and performers from their communities.
Buron said a goal is to “take away negative stigmas when it comes to the urban arts,” he said.
It highlights hip-hop culture, including graffiti art, dance, lowriders, beatboxing and other art forms developed by working class people of color.
It will be a bigger event than past festivals, which have been held at locations including Northgate Park and the Department of Motor Vehicles lot on Northeast Portland Road.
Performers include Chilean hip-hop artist Noa Soulas at 6 p.m.
Buron said the artist reached out after seeing their call for participants on Instagram.
“They saw our post and were like, ‘I want to be part of that.’ At first we thought we were being trolled,” he said.
Other performances include hip-hop artists from Salem and Portland, a people’s dance, a live graffiti demonstration and a community health presentation at 1:45 p.m. about the current state of Covid.
Ten local barbers have donated their time to offer back-to-school haircuts free for young people age 6 to 16.
There will also be a photo scavenger hunt from 5-7 p.m. where aspiring photographers can get tips and practice with more seasoned artists, a jiujitsu workshop from 5:30-8 p.m., and a screen-printing workshop.
Buron said grassroots, youth-led activities like Urban Art Fest are what Salem ultimately needs to prevent shootings, gang activity and drug activity among young people.
“It’s all about empowerment — you have to invest in youth at a young age,” he said. “They have to get out of poverty, there has to be programs where they aren’t hungry. You can’t have talks about preventing violence and crime without addressing the root causes of crime.”
The festival remains community-led, paid for by local business sponsors and the volunteer work of the organizers who put it together.
“This event is not about individuals, it’s about the community. It’s not about branding,” he said.
Local organizations and businesses will have booths where families can connect with resources. This year’s festival is working to highlight housing insecurity and call for more low-income housing to be built in Salem — not just projects termed “affordable” which often have rent higher than working-class people can actually afford.
Buron said they chose to hold it at Riverfront Park because alack of suitable locations for the community to gather in northeast Salem. Northgate Park lacks parking to accommodate a large event, and he said many other venues aren’t accessible by transit or are too close to dangerous roads where people regularly speed.
“We really want to have it in northeast Salem,” he said. ‘Northeast Salem is not built in places for people to have fun. We’re just stacked on top of each other.”
More information about Urban Art Fest and a schedule of performers is available on Facebook.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
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