Art and immersive experiences have the power to bring people together and to transform our communities for the better, in this episode of Experience Imagination, we went onsite to Immerse to explore this firsthand. Immerse by Creative City Project is a performing and interactive arts festival in Orlando, Florida. This year more than 1,000 artists came together to perform and share their art with the community. Listen as we chat with Cole NeSmith Founder of Creative City Project as well as a few of the artists who showcased their skills at this year’s festival. Check out the full video below or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
Big thanks to our special guests on this podcast: Cole NeSmith from Creative City Project, Claire Johnson from New Cool Art, Zachary Mailhot from Orlando Science Center, Mikayla Winger and Caitlin Sprague from Falcon’s Creative Group, and Nic Kessler from Hawkmoon.
What is Immerse?
Cole NeSmith: Immerse is a performing and interactive arts festival that happens across the streets and public spaces of downtown Orlando featuring unique experiences that audiences can’t have anywhere else in the world. And that is what makes Immerse special. And for us, in the end, it’s all about helping cultivate and elevate Orlando as a truly creative city. And it really is theme park capital of the world. So much of the talent comes from that land, that world.
The Need for Arts
Cole NeSmith: Immerse started on the belief that artists have the ability to transform our community for the better. And I think as people walk down these streets here in downtown Orlando and they come upon an art gallery in an alleyway and they come upon a violin player on the sidewalk or they experience a tornado of fire from the Orlando Science Center right along the street. I think that those positive, meaningful, shared experiences really not only are meaningful for the relationships that we’re building, but they also help transform our relationship to this as a physical place and then ultimately our emotional relationship to the city.
I think art really plays a role in being and building and connecting people to culture.
