FREE CITY is a large-scale public art festival that temporarily reclaims a location of the City, with each event taking place in a different neighborhood. Free City originally would reclaim the former Flint-Chevy manufacturing site along the Flint River for public use. The festival features dozens of music, dance, and theater performances, and art installations – all free and open to the public – to reconnect residents. A critical mass of temporary activities turns a neglected area into an active public space, highlighting the ongoing transformation of Flint.
On October 12, 2019, Flint Public Art Project hosted our inaugural Free City Mural Festival. The festival took place along and around S. Saginaw St. focusing on the Southside of Flint.
In August 2017, the fifth annual Free City festival will address themes of ecology and technology, inviting collaborations between artists, designers, scientists, ecologists, and engineers that explore environmental remediation, interactive installations, citizen science, organizing tools, wearable technology, DIY robotics, and other emerging fields at the intersection of art, ecology, and technology.
The 2016 Free City festival takes motion and play as its theme, inviting installations, sculptures, projections, and performances employing movement of objects and people through unexpected, unexplainable, and uncanny means.
Free City 2015: Being Here invites work that calls to mind the presence of the individual in a specific time and place, exploring the effects of new media and technology on experience.
Free City 2014 returns to Chevy Commons for its second annual public event on August 22 – 23. This two-day festival of art, design and technology opens up the former industrial site for emergent uses in art, design, new media, and community engagement.