This weekend sees the long-awaited return of a three-day arts takeover of downtown Orlando — Creative City Project’s signature Immerse performing arts festival. Following a three-year hiatus, Immerse is celebrating a 10th iteration as hundreds of performers and art installations turn 10 blocks of downtown Orlando into live stages and canvases.
Heading up this year’s installment of Immerse are some very big names in the form of Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil and Broadway star and Orlando native Michael James Scott.
Leading Creative City Project’s artistic direction, the organization’s founder Cole NeSmith holds deep connections with Orlando-based creatives and a long history of giving those performers stages, both ad hoc and formal.
In October 2012, NeSmith, alongside a cadre of local artists, spontaneously began putting on public shows. On a whim, NeSmith reached out to Cirque du Soleil, who had a residence at Disney Springs at the time. With NeSmith aiding and abetting, the troupe put on a 45-minute original performance in front of City Hall. Thirty days of shows, public art displays and increased media attention later, NeSmith saw the beginnings of a new and very ambitious undertaking.
“At the end of the day I was like, ‘OK, this was an incredible first experiment. What does this turn into?’ And really it has just been that same spirit of creative people coming together and just kind of increasing scale over time,” NeSmith says.
With Immerse mere days away from returning, there’s one quite notable and surprising act to look forward to: Blue Man Group.
The enigmatic cobalt-faced performers haven’t really played Orlando since closing their previous show at Universal Orlando in 2021 due to COVID-19. Immerse essentially serves as their reintroduction to the City Beautiful ahead of an upcoming residency at Icon Park.
Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil are big names in the performing arts, but participating in Immerse — an event that gets them up close and personal with their audience — allows the global talents to connect directly with a community that has long embraced them.
“While these are performing arts organizations that are recognized around the world, we have the special opportunity for [Blue Man Group] to be a part of our community. And I think both Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group at their heart aren’t just for-profit art companies. They are people who care about the communities where they are,” says NeSmith.
Immerse will also showcase plenty of locally grown creative acts, including Chris Keough’s Orlando Vocal Collective.
“It’s 21 singers and they’ll be with a live band and some percussion on three 40-foot scaffolding towers on Seneff Plaza,” NeSmith says. “Chris has created a 16-minute fusion of songs from Beyoncé [to] Michael Jackson. These 21 singers, all of them are incredible vocalists and professionals and some of the sounds that they create are so thrilling that I truly think that those who get to see that will be talking about it for a long time.”
The arts festival is public and almost entirely free for all to attend — save for ticket upgrades for special viewing areas and other, ahem, immersive packages — but for Creative City Project, this comes at a cost. During the hiatus since the last Immerse in 2021, the organization has had time to gather backing forces and funds, including support from Orange County.
“We have been working with the County and the city on saying, ‘Hey, we believe that Immerse is transformative for our community. It platforms and pays artists to participate, it continues to expand what our community is known for, not only for world-class theme parks, but also for incredible art and incredible culture and performance,'” says NeSmith. “So it’s been that two-year process of setting up that funding so we can make sure that Immerse can exist and continue as an asset to the community as a whole.”
To turn 10 city blocks of downtown Orlando into interactive art and theater spaces, Creative City Project has worked with the Downtown Development Board, the Dr. Phillips Center and many local businesses to tackle the myriad logistics of maintaining traffic control, safety, security and permitting.
Recently, the city reopened Orange Avenue to traffic on weekends, but NeSmith says that Orange Avenue and other adjoining streets will be closed to traffic during the festival.
A local deep cut of this year’s Immerse is the resurrection and relighting of the Merita Bread sign, which has been stored at the Morse Museum since 2014. For Orlando natives like NeSmith, the sign’s revival brings back a rush of nostalgia.
“I have memories of driving down I-4 as a kid with my mom and rolling down the window in hopes of Merita baking fresh bread that I could smell,” says NeSmith. “So I will say that you will smell something at the installation. I will also say that there’s nothing like real fresh-baked bread, but we’ve tried to get as close as possible.”
Immerse celebrates and platforms the creative work of local artists in a public space where Orlandoans can directly interact with them, a result of NeSmith’s collaborative work with his team dating back to the moment he started making those initial phone calls back in 2012.
“The thing that we’re making for the people of our city and those who come in from outside the city to experience this thing really does make a difference and transforms the way people experience and see Orlando,” says NeSmith. “For me, a lot of this may be selfish. I want to live in a city where artists and creative people feel like they can be at home. I love creative people and I want to live in a place with a lot of creative people and I think that Immerse is instrumental in helping create that place.”
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This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.