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Gone but Not Forgotten; Community Remembers Mya Peña
Written by:
February 2, 2021
On January 14, 2020, Mile High Academy student Mya Peña lost her life in a murder-suicide, the victim of domestic violence. On the one-year anniversary of this heartbreaking loss, the Denver community, Peña family, friends, and Mile High Academy students and staff gathered to honor Mya’s legacy, remembering not only a kind-hearted individual, but also creating awareness about domestic violence and mental health.
They gathered on January 14 in downtown Denver where local artist Austin Zucchini-Fowler painted a mural in remembrance of Mya at the corner of 21st and Lawrence streets. This location holds significance as it is near the area where Mya frequently served food to the homeless.
The pandemic hit Denver’s arts and culture scene hard, forcing many businesses, performance spaces, museums and galleries to close, at least temporarily, at the end of March. In the months since, artists and curators have rallied to keep culture alive, to comment on social injustice, and to inspire us all to appreciate essential workers and health-care providers.
Along the way, the scene has shown its grit and ability to stay relevant through the toughest of times, though some longstanding cultural institutions have been wrangling with their own inner demons.
Here are the ten biggest arts and culture stories in Denver in 2020:
421 Shares
The Catamounts‘ production of
Against all odds, 2020 became the year we fell madly, deeply in love with Denver.
Once stay-at-home orders relaxed in the spring, our cabin fever led us to seek out safe, in-person opportunities to counteract endless hours of Zoom meetings and awkward virtual versions of our favorite events. The creativity we found was inspiring, and it often popped up when we least expected it.
While taking walks on Denver’s new pandemic
Sunnyside Music Festival which, in lieu of filling a park with thousands of concert-goers, brought music to the streets by putting bands on pedicabs that roamed the neighborhood.
In the spring of 2020, praising front-line health-care workers was all the rage. Many of these too-often-underpaid heroes were putting in daunting hours, quarantining from their children and loved ones and, in some cases, dying from the very pandemic they were trying to stop; praising them was the least we could do. People rigged up homemade masks so that doctors and nurses could get the real thing. Little Caesars flooded hospitals with pizzas, Krispy Kreme plied them with free doughnuts, and artists celebrated the medical community on magazine covers and city walls.
The art was overwhelmingly positive, fueled by hope: Our country might be shutting down, but at least we were getting along.