(bright music) - Well, your summer road trip bucket list is not complete without a stop at the Helper Arts, Music and Film Festival.

You'll find a vibrant showcase of art, music, film, and culture in the historic downtown area.

Oran Stainbrook joins us now to share the must see moments at this year's festival.

Welcome, Oran.

- Hi, thanks for having me.

- Thanks for joining us on the show to talk about this year's festival.

I am so excited.

What is the theme this year?

- The theme this year, we're calling it Open Source.

- [Liz] And why is that?

- Well, one of the goals this year was to see if we could find a way to just make the festival more accessible than ever before.

And reflecting on the 32 years that the festival has now been running, we were thinking of the era that the festival was founded in, which was 1994, and thinking about the internet culture of the '90s and how that was sort of the dawn of digital art.

And we feel like we're at a similar moment in time with the dawn of AI and AI generated art and the conversations that that has inspired.

So we thought it'd be a good time to look back to 1994 when the festival began, but also just try to open it up more to people that may not have thought of themselves as professional artists.

We're trying to include more emerging and aspiring artists this year and going forward into the future.

So that's how we came up with the theme.

- I love that.

And it's a four-day celebration, so there's something for pretty much everyone when they stop by, right?

- Totally.

Yeah, we have a pretty broad definition of art and what we think of as a potential source of creativity or form of self-expression.

So of course, there's graphic art, sculpture, but we've got a lot of different artisans that do crafts.

Of course, there's the live music, the film festival, but we even have a car show and we're trying to feature some of our local businesses like Helper Beer is a local craft brewery that has been winning national awards.

And we think that itself is a form of art.

So again, trying to make it more inclusive than ever before and just celebrate all the different forms of art in Helper.

- I love that.

Thank you so much for sharing this information.

So if you've been there before, there's something new for you to check out this year.

Total reason to come back and check out the Helper Arts Festival happening on Main Street, August 20th through the 23rd.

Just head to helperartsfestival.com and you can get more details and information.

I'm Liz Adeola, and thank you for watching "Contact."

(bright music) Philanthropy, Arts, culture.

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Hi, I'm Liz Adeola, the host of Contact, a show that connects you with local events and organizations that serve your community.

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