After walking down the isolated side street, you make your way to a worn building made of red brick. After opening the unlabeled door and making your way up a seemingly endless flight of old stairs, you’re directed to a back room that looks as if it would better serve as a storage closet than the headquarters of a successful organization.

After finding your way through the maze of storage totes and T-shirt design templates, you see Joe DiPasquale and Tanya Zabinski standing next to a large, black metal machine. DiPasquale is happy to talk, but Zabinski is reluctant to stop working for even a few minutes. And with good reason: This is the countdown to the 10th annual Elmwood Avenue Festival of the Arts.

The festival has become Elmwood Avenue’s point of pride, a diverse collection of all things artistic that highlight the area’s distinctive style. It’s a celebration of the creative spirit that quite literally lives in this place year-round and, on Saturday and Sunday, that creativity will explode along the avenue between Lafayette Avenue and West Ferry Street.

In addition to the artist’s market, which runs down the center of Elmwood Avenue and features 15 genres of art, the event features three stages of live music, a dance tent for performance arts, a wooden dance floor for the flight of foot, a festival cafe (featuring solar smoothies, among other creative offerings) and cultural and environmental rows that showcase community organizations while offering information about local clean energy and environmental efforts.

“We are trying to create a broad swath of the creativity that is in Western New York,” DiPasquale, the festival chairman, said. “It’s about bringing people together. It’s hard to bring people together if we’re gonna wash floors. It’s easy to bring people together to dance, to sing, to make stuff, to see incredible performances and art.”

Kidding around

Nothing highlights the diversity of the festival better than Kidsfest, a slew of creative children’s activities that emphasize spontaneous creativity. Zabinski, a Kidsfest cochair, spun a homemade “buzzer” toy she had made out of a button, two sticks and a piece of twine. She talked about today’s youth being entranced by digital display screens rather than board games.

“That’s totally antisocial,” she said. “And so this is the opposite. It’s sensory and social.”

Children will be glad to know that at this festival, clean hands and faces are actually discouraged.

“We’re trying to get people’s hands dirty and [get them to] participate,” DiPasquale said. “Feel stuff, smell stuff, touch stuff.”

Kidsfest culminates with a parade down Elmwood from Auburn to Lafayette avenues at 4 p. m. Sunday where children display the homemade toys and gadgets they’ve created at the festival.

“There’s a thousand people carrying a 90-foot-long banner down the street with music and kids, people on stilts, puppets, giant puppets and kids singing and playing drums, twirling stuff,” Di- Pasquale said.

This year’s theme for the parade is “The Wheel,” and the banner will feature designs made by a giant, custom-made Spirograph tool. Di- Pasquale said he was initially concerned that the parade would interfere with the artists’ market. The first parade confirmed his fears, but after its completion, he received a surprising response.

“The artists where the parade didn’t go in front of their booths complained that we didn’t send the parade by their booth,” he said. “So all the artists, local artists, anyone from out of town, they tell us the parade, for them, is a highlight. To see the kids just walking to Kidsfest and see the amount of creative energy being put forth at Kidsfest is invigorating.”

Keeping it local

That attitude of cohesive creativity and fraternity is the unstated credo of this festival, where intimacy reigns and locality rules. Each of the roughly 450 artists (the number is limited to preserve the festival’s intimacy) is judged by a panel of organizers, with preference given to local artists.

“They’re really good about keeping it local and keeping it true to the arts scene and not to the craft market or a gigantic market that is out there,” said Alix Martin of redFISH Art Studios in East Aurora. “They support local food vendors. They support local restaurants. They keep all artists from a 200-mile radius. It stays pretty tight that way. They keep an amazing caliber of fine art.”

That’s why Pennsylvania-based artist Sean Huntington was so thrilled to be accepted for a fourth time.

“You wait a couple months and you kind of cross your fingers and hope that your stuff’s still cool enough and that it catches somebody’s eye and I guess they have a couple artists from the neighborhood look at your work,” Huntington said. “Then they get back to you. They send you a letter, you jump for joy and then you start painting. Or throwing pots. You’ve just got to gear up for it.”

Huntington has been to the kind of festivals where the vibe is less creativity and more commercialism. Elmwood, to him, offers a more intimate setting where he’s more than just a number.

“Most festivals nowadays, you just kind of feel like you’re giving them money and they just kind of leave you hanging,” he said. “Elmwood, they come around in the morning with the coffee and doughnuts and orange juice when you’re setting up. You have a block captain who actually comes in and checks on you and says ‘hi’ to you and knows your name. Elmwood really gives back, they really appreciate you being there. I don’t know if it’s because of the whole grassroots vibe of you being there. They actually seem like they enjoy you, which is a nice change of pace when you do these a lot.”

Going green

For the many organizers and more than 250 volunteers buzzing around the Elmwood Strip, giving back isn’t a side benefit to holding a festival. It’s the mission.

Music stages are powered by solar energy and food vendors contribute their waste to the festival’s compost heap. More than 50 recycling bins are stationed throughout the neighborhood and trash cans are monitored by volunteers, who insist that the 40-cubic yard dumpster be filled only with trash. DiPasquale said the festival has produced only one complaint from a neighborhood resident in 10 years.

“So many of the volunteers are from the neighborhood, so we all are on the same page, keeping it clean, keeping it family-oriented, and we have volunteers that walk the neighborhood and look for trash,” he said. “Literally, if they get one bag of garbage off people’s lawns in the entire neighborhood, I’d be surprised.”

Cultural/Environmental Row chair Marika Woods-Frankenstein has even used the festival as an outreach to help other events develop recycling plans. In addition, participants plant one tree on Elmwood Avenue at the completion of each year’s festival.

“We are the first event of this type to recycle,” DiPasquale said. “And now the city wants to see events’ recycling plans. That’s what we’re trying to do is set the bar high for events.”

DiPasquale talks about the event’s origins 10 years ago when organizers just got together to host something creative and fun. Now, planning starts almost immediately after the festival ends. Countless meetings and hours go toward pulling together what has become a neighborhood staple on a shoestring budget.

But it’s all worth it, DiPasquale said, because of the estimated 80,000 people who will descend on Elmwood Avenue in the next two days.

“People can come and every walk of life can be there,” he said. “Every race, every gender, every color, every socioeconomic status can be there, come together, have a great time together and spend what they want. Do what they want.”

That’s something DiPasquale said the entire region can embrace.

“It’s about Western New York,” he said. “It’s not just about the Elmwood Village. The city’s really important. We’re trying to build the city but we’re also trying to build community and that’s a key function of the whole thing, to bring people together and throw a really good party.”

FREE ENTERTAINMENT

Here is a tentative list of the entertainment offered on stages throughout the festival.

SATURDAY

Main Stage

11 a.m.: N-Dias(The Mix) w/Alassane

Noon, Them Jazzbeards

2 p.m. Nelson Starr & The Benjamins

3 p.m. Stone Country Band

4 p.m. Free Henry!

5 p.m. John & Mary and The Valkyries

Wilson Farms Stage

10 a.m. Les Amis Fencing Club

11 a.m. Megan Callahan

Noon, Nadia Ibrahim Middle Eastern Dance

1 p.m. Dave Ruch

2 p.m. Michel Weber and Vic Lazar

3 p.m. Noa Bursie

4 p.m. Delaney and Rob

5 p.m. Ladies First Trio

Dance Tent

10:15 a.m. Michael Meldrum and Friends

11 a.m. TriPod Black

Noon, Shady Grove

1 p.m. Peanut Brittle Satellite

2 p.m. Tree of Live Baba M'Baye

3:30 p.m. Flatbed

4:30 p.m. The Slags

5:30 p.m. The Painkillers

SUNDAYMain Stage

10 a.m. Stacy Zawadski's Dancers

11 a.m. Festival Ballet Ensemble

11:45 a.m. Buffalo Contemporary Dance

12:30 p.m. Configuration Dance

1:30 p.m. Lehrer Dance

2:30 p.m. Janet Reed's Dancers

Wilson Farms Stage

10 a.m. Gaia Miranda

11 a.m. Outofar Jug Band

Noon, John Lombardo and Joe Rozler

1 p.m. Mary Ramsey and Friends

2 p.m. Mir Ali Trio Gitano

3 p.m. Shasti

4 p.m. Gretchen Schultz and Doug Morgano

Dance Tent

10:30 a.m. Gospel

11:30 a.m. Macy Favor

12:30 p.m. Steam Donkeys

1:30 p.m. Sitar Jamz

2:30 p.m. Outer Circle Orchestra

4 p.m. Rubblebucket Orchestra

KIDSFEST

Saturday

10 a.m. Trois Amis (music and juggling)

11 a.m. Hawk Creek Wildlife Live Animal Demonstration

Noon, Theatre of Youth interactive workshop

1 p.m. American Academy of Ballet

2 p.m. Buffalo Suzuki Strings

3 p.m. Folkloric Productions Dance Company, samba workshop

4 p.m. Puppeteer Michele Costa

5 p.m. Michael Meldrum & the Buffalo Song Project.

Sunday

11 a.m. Garth Sinclair (Scottish bagpipes)

Noon, Aurora Waldorf School, The Ugly Duckling Puppet Show

1 p.m. Rince Na Tiarna Irish dancers

2 p.m. Storyteller Karima Amin

3 p.m. Michael Meldrum & the Buffalo Song Project

4 p.m. The Wheel Parade with puppeteer Franklin LaVoie. Led with music by the 12/8 Path Band and Ilya's Belly Dance Studio.

Also:

Free After Hours Concert, 6:30-8 p.m. Saturday at the Lafayette Stage with the Skiffle Minstrels and opening act Left on Red.

Strolling performers include City Fiddle, Western New York Chorale and Trois Amis.

Note: All performances are subject to change.