The City of Boulder, and other partners, recently were selected to be on the short list of a potential new home for the Sundance Film Festival. In Boulder style, this has generated an abundance of discourse about the merits and challenges of a Boulder Sundance if indeed the festival moved here with an inaugural festival in the early winter of 2027. This will benefit Boulder if it reflects a great deal of imagination, and also the values of Boulder, allied civic, non-profit and private entities, and the diverse collection of proposers and civic leaders.

The proposed film festival has the potential to strengthen our arts and tourist community. From filmmakers, commercial artists and techno media entrepreneurs to local retail, the potential spike in local visitation and local placemaking can be potentially transforming. Enabling and activating creative venues can contribute to the evolving community in many ways. It can promote our cherished goals of sustainability, social equity and environmental stewardship with new and diverse patronage, more arts experiences for all, and providing new and imaginative ways for arts production to happen and to be experienced. Most significantly, the transplanted festival can help inspire community building that can complement and enhance what has been achieved by BIFF and others, and reinforce community goals.

Our amazing community imagination that has led to an abundance of open space, historic preservation, downtown redevelopment and cycling mobility is world-renowned. We can do the same for arts and cinema and more. Boulder Sundance can follow the intentions of our active arts community, the arts commission, past and current cultural planning efforts, and the robust citizen engagement that exists. A new and unique festival established here hopefully will strengthen identified service and facility gaps and help all build a more sustainable and greener community that will support both locals, the business community and visitors. To achieve these intentions, the investments in Boulder Sundance should not gentrify the community, but ensure that jobs and wealth building and community benefits are shared broadly across diverse communities.

There are plenty of venues available and many possible ways that can ensure that multiple film festivals can be based in Boulder. But engaging partners and the community will ensure that BIFF will continue to evolve while helping a Boulder Sundance to be born. BIFF has been a remarkable non-profit player that has carefully built an amazing community engine including cinema professionals, local volunteers, neighbors, and the supporting business and non-profit communities. BIFF and Sundance can coexist with different brands, venues and/or schedules, or perhaps there are ways and means to combine some of the offerings and experiences. The imagination and resources of the community and these partners working collaboratively but distinctly can dramatically strengthen the cultural and arts communities of BIFF and Boulder, and provide many community benefits to Boulder.

If Boulder is selected, the partners and community can work quickly and thoughtfully to create and build Boulder Sundance to enrich a future for all with both intention and serendipity.

As Mark Twain once said, “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Jerry Shapins lives in Boulder.