Dusty bands of snow cling to the treelines, and smaller ponds are still dull with ice as the plane sinks toward Cleveland, Ohio’s tidy suburbs. The temperature as I step out of the airport hovers in the low-40s, but it’s sunny. Not bad for mid-February in the Midwest, where temps can range from below zero to sixty degrees, depending on the year, your luck, and climate change. It’ll dip below freezing overnight, but it’s predicted to reach the mid-50s tomorrow—and tomorrow is what counts. Tomorrow, Cleveland’s West Flats, a sleepy post-industrial netherworld offering a couple of bars and the Greater Cleveland Aquarium, will be transformed into a one-day community-based performance arts festival known as Brite Winter. In its 11th year, Brite Winter has grown from three bands and six hundred visitors to over 40 musical performances drawing 20,000 people, starting in the afternoon and pulsing until after midnight. It’s not just about the music though. Brite, as fans call it, is redefining Cleveland’s perceptions of community and performance art. It’s not what I expect of a music festival. In addition to the three stages where performers showcasing a variety of musical backgrounds and styles entertain an equally eclectic mix of visitors, Brite invites musicians to perform off the stages. I’m making my way from the Campfire Tent and surrounding food truck delights when Bitch, Thunder!, an all-female party drum line, erupts into beats and shouts that get the crowd moving with them as they make their way up Main Street. They retire into the Artist’s Lounge, a space Brite Winter creates for the performance artists to network (or fan on) one another, and I am set free of their percussive spell. The sense of magic increases as I stroll into a warehouse transformed into an oversized living room. Giant bunk beds host a troop of bouncing kids, a sea of comfy sofas face a stage designed to look like an old-fashioned TV set. Several other whimsical areas inside this three-sided room reflect other comforts of home, to include a fanciful kitchen and an overflowing bathtub. Everywhere, couples, groups, families are resting, reclining, jumping, pausing, snapping pictures – not just of the art, but of themselves as part of it. This level of artistry that you can literally climb, or sink into, is intentional. It’s designed by Brite’s ingeneers (ingenuity + engineers = ingeneers) who create from the principle of placemaking, or the idea that public spaces should foster happiness, well-being, and community. They should surprise, delight, educate, and innovate. It’s not art that you just look at – it’s art you should touch. It’s art crafted from the participants it draws. As Brite has grown, it has moved through several parts of the city, coaxing Clevelanders out of their own neighborhoods and into areas they might not otherwise venture, not just by showcasing local talent but by making it a free event. Its reputation now pulls in people from outside Cleveland, challenging their perceptions of the industrial city whose river once burned. This year, back on the West side of the Flats, the feel is a little edgy. A multilane highway arches over the festival-goers, dividing one side of the grounds from the other. Suspended from its metal girders, a giant disco ball spills a flurry of colored lights across the better part of a city block. In the afternoon shadows of the highway overhead, kids delight in chasing these fleeting rainbow flashes. At night, after the kids are at home, the area becomes club-like, with crowds of bundled adults clustered beneath to watch the headlining band, Ra Ra Riot. In the background, industrial silos loom over the festival grounds, rendered friendly onlookers by projectors that beam the Brite Winter banner across their faded facades. The community Brite is building is as varied and variable as the weather in Cleveland in February. Despite the challenges that come with that territory, Brite offers a welcoming free experience to anyone who chooses to engage. If that doesn’t give you the warm fuzzies in February, I don’t know what will. I know I’ll be back to challenge my expectations again next year.