Interview: What to expect to expect at Sacramento's Chalk It Up! art festival

It’s going to be a blazing hot weekend in Sacramento, but that’s not stopping one of city’s favorite Labor Day traditions from happening — the Chalk It Up! Chalk art and music festival at Fremont Park.

Despite the high heat warning issued over Labor Day weekend, organizers for the festival said they are taking precautions, including having a medical team and urging those vulnerable to high heat not to attend.

It’s the nonprofit’s 32nd year hosting the event. The money raised from donations improves art education and programs all over Sacramento.

If the hot weather doesn’t deter you, the festival is colorful and brings artists in to take over the entire square block surrounding Fremont Park and transform it into bright works of art.

Chalk It Up! Board member Will Morris joined CapRadio’s Insight host Vicki Gonzalez to talk about the organization and what people can expect this weekend.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Interview Highlights

On how the Chalk It Up! Festival is structured

Well, there’s kind of two parts. The Chalk It Up! Festival is the part that most people know about, and that’s the three-day free festival.

That’s during every Labor Day weekend … and that’s the festival that everyone knows about. They come to … Fremont Park, and they see hundreds of artists doing art all around the park.

And they get to experience all the different ways that people express themselves through art, and they also get to participate in different activities with their kids — have good food and listen to awesome music.

Then we also have the part of the Chalk It Up! that we do the rest of the year, where we collect money for artists, and we give out grants to local art programs for our youth art education.

On what the proceeds collected go towards

We have teachers that lead art programs in our schools, and then we also have art organizations and nonprofit organizations that tend to do art programs with our youth.

And all throughout the year, we’re collecting donations, and then twice a year, we give out grants to these organizations in these programs to be able to support the youth.

On how the festival has planned for the triple-digit heat forecast this weekend

We take it seriously. We all know in Sacramento that hot summers are just a normal thing.

And so every year, we try to think of new ways to make it a little more comfortable and a little easier. But especially these years, when we’re going to have triple digits, we think of all we can do to help.

So we will have two large, we call them ‘water monsters,’ they’re refill stations. And it has cool filtered water that’s free for everybody to refill their water bottles.

We’ll have plenty of ice-cold drinks and treats from our food trucks.

We also have a medical station by the Sacramento Medical Reserve Corps, and so if someone feels overheated, they have a tent that they can go cool off in.

So yeah, we’re excited for the heat. It’s better than the rain when we’re trying to make chalk art.

On why the festival could bring joy to people’s lives two years into the pandemic

Over the last couple of years, I think that people need something to express themselves.

I think the arts have been a good outlet for me, and even more so we want to be able to provide them that opportunity to be able to express themselves.

We love that the art community in Sacramento is taking that up and doing so much good with it.