Jaleesa McIntosh can still recall one of her earliest memories of the Colorado Black Arts Festival: The sound of the drumming, the dancing and the feeling of meeting a larger African diaspora in real time.
“I have been going to the Black Arts Festival since I was young, I would say probably seven or eight,” McIntosh says. “My mom took me and my cousin there every year, and I loved it.”
That childhood tradition has since become part of her adult work. The executive director of the Colorado Black Arts Festival, McIntosh is helping lead the event into its 40th annual celebration July 10-12 in Denver’s City Park. The free, three-day festival will fill the park with live music, visual art, cultural storytelling, food, a marketplace featuring more than 80 artists, creatives and Black-owned businesses, a Children’s Pavilion, an Art Garden and the returning Boogaloo Celebration Parade…