Two people stand on ladders using spray cans to paint an outdoor wall. — RedCan artists work on a mural in Eagle Butte, South Dakota.
Photo courtesy of Cheyenne River Youth Project

A teenager with wavy dark hair crouches on the ground of a garage, using a ballpoint pen to mark masking tape on the bumper of a bright red Impala. — Photo by Andri Tambunan, courtesy of SAVA

Close-up on the feet of a person in camo cargo shorts and sneakers on a skateboard. — Photo by Josh Weilepp, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Close-up on the hands of a DJ, cueing up a record on a turntable. — Photo by Daniel Martínez González, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Streetwise

streetwise (adj.): possessing the skills and attitudes necessary to survive in a difficult or challenging situation or environment

“Streetwise” is a characteristic once primarily associated with city life. More generally, it describes someone who navigates their immediate environment, but also the broader world, with a certain knowledge and resourcefulness that comes from “on the ground” experience. Someone who is streetwise has a keen understanding of their surroundings. They make sound decisions under pressure, adapting and improvising as necessary to find a solution to a challenge.

The Festival’s Streetwise activities and presentations showcased the creativity with which young people, past and present, express their connections to the public spaces they inhabit. Whether living in urban, suburban, or rural communities, they claim these sites through a range of creative practices—mapping routes and communities and reshaping their surroundings in the process. In real life, and out on the street for all to see, they transform everyday spaces into hubs of display, interaction, and community. As artists and athletes, their activities often emerge in unofficial, irreverent, and unexpected ways.

Here we highlight several forms of expressions:
(Click a category to jump down and read more)

Lowrider Culture
Street Art and Graffiti
Skating and Skate Arts
Sidewalk Astronomy
DJing

Participants presented skating demonstrations, live paint skate decks and murals, and demonstrated the arts and techniques involved in customizing cars and bikes. Visitors signed up for skateboarding lessons, participate in family activities, and learned about the traditions, communities, and skills embodied in these creative practices. Live DJ sets provided daily changing soundscapes that highlighted different music subcultures.

Lowrider Culture

Originating in post-WWII Mexican American communities in the U.S. Southwest and California, lowriders are an expression of creative craftsmanship, with cars featuring bold paint, chrome details, and intricate upholstery. Lowrider culture has evolved into a powerful form of Latinx artistic, political, and cultural expression that honors heritage, builds family identity, and fosters intergenerational knowledge.

Today, lowrider culture extends across ethnic, racial, and national borders. Women and youth are increasingly shaping its future—while still honoring its roots.

This program is produced in collaboration with Corazón y Vida: Lowriding Culture, opening October 2025 at the National Museum of American History.

Photo by Andri Tambunan, courtesy of SAVA

Street Art and Graffiti

Graffiti and street art come from the urban margins, with “writers” and artists challenging the status quo through intricate, stylish, and competitive painting. Once derided as a criminal act, today street art is embraced as a global movement and a form of public art that can reflect and empower local communities.

Whether urban or rural, graffiti writers and muralists often maintain the protest mindset and grassroots methods of the art forms’ roots. Street art lends itself to participatory co-creation, giving ephemeral expression to voices and views that may have few official outlets. Murals and graphics engage with all kinds of issues, and artists rewrite public spaces with the identities and perspectives of a place’s creative inhabitants.

Young Indigenous artists from the Cheyenne River reservation experiment with graffiti and create new works during the annual RedCan Graffiti Jam.
Photo courtesy of Cheyenne River Youth Project

Skating and Skate Arts

Although skateboarding has risen to global prominence as a sport, it has always embodied intrinsic values that connect it to youth culture.

As a mode of travel, it offers independence, expanding the number of places you can go and how you get there. It offers a vehicle for creative self-expression, from the style of your skating to the way you dress or decorate your board. This emphasis on creativity extends to connected artistic expressions like street art and DJ culture. Most of all, it fosters a sense of belonging and teaches you how to build and maintain a community, with its own set of rules often outside of more rigid societal structures. The heart of these communities are local skate shops, skateparks, and DIY skate spots. In these spaces, it is encouraged to try out new things, arrange obstacles in different ways, and its normal to fall, dust yourself off, and try again.

As a skater, your local skate shop is your headquarters. It is where you buy your supplies, where you go to build your community. Young skaters often use these spaces to find inspiration, mentorship, and each other. We partnered with two local shops this year to help host our skate jams, skating showcases where visitors witnessed the skills and creativity of D.C.’s local talent.

Photo by Craig Fergus, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Sidewalk Astronomy

Sidewalk astronomy brings the cosmos to city blocks and street corners. A form of community or participatory science, professional and amateur astronomers alike have organized these activities in U.S. cities since the nineteenth century. Setting up their telescopes out in the city—where planets, stars, and celestial phenomena are often invisible—sidewalk astronomers remind us of our place in the universe.

These and other participants from across the 2025 Festival program provided presentations and sky-viewing events exploring and bridging diverse knowledge systems—blending scientific inquiry with cultural perspectives to deepen our understanding of the cosmos.

Photo by Sojin Kim

DJing

At the Festival, community skate sessions and jams were accompanied by the next generation of DJs representing the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia region) and New York. Check out a different set of sounds and personalities each day, curated especially for our skate park.