The story
Who owns the party?
Right now, not you. Denver's festival culture rents its home from corporations, prices climb, lineups flatten, and the money leaves the community that shows up. OurFest exists to change who owns the party.
The problem
A handful of promoters and venue groups decide what Denver hears, what it costs, and where the profit goes. The people who make a show a show, the crowd, get a ticket stub and a service fee. When the lease changes hands or the margins thin, the scene loses its room and starts over.
The answer is ownership
OurFest is being formed as a Colorado cooperative: a real legal structure where the people who show up own the organization. Not a fan club, not a rewards program, a co-op, with bylaws, elections, and books the members can read.
One member, one vote
Every member holds exactly one vote. No investor class, no golden shares. A board elected by the members answers to the members.
Patronage, not profit-seeking
When the co-op has a good year, surplus flows back to members as patronage rebates, proportional to participation, not to wealth.
Transparent by default
Member counts, revenue, and the land fund get published in a monthly member email. The numbers are the trust.
Done right, or not at all
The membership offer was structured the right way before it opened. The bylaws are public, and you can read them here.
How a show happens
We're not a promoter chasing rooms and promising a crowd we don't have. It works the other way around. Anyone can propose a venue or an artist, or propose themselves. The whole membership votes, and the act with the real audience wins. Then OurFest does the organizing: the booking, the promo, the door, the crew.
So if you can bring people, a band with a following, a promoter with a room, a night that already has a crowd, this is the place to bring it. You bring the draw. We run the show around it, and the members own the result.
What $350 buys
Three things: a say, a deal, and a story. The planned community membership costs about one festival ticket, payable in up to six monthly installments. It buys an equal vote, member pricing and priority access to everything we produce, member-only events, and a patronage rebate in profitable years. Membership works to pay for itself, and we'll publish that math.
What it is not: an investment. Membership is patronage, a stake in the community, not a financial return. Nobody at OurFest will ever pitch it as a way to profit, including from land the co-op may someday own.
Why join now
Every other show in town, your opinion is worth nothing. Here it runs the booking. Members pick the rooms, pick the lineups, and read the books. That's the trade: one membership, one vote, and numbers we publish after every show.
And there's one thing we can only offer once: the beginning. Founding members get their names on the origin story of this thing. That's not a perk we invented, just a fact of showing up early. Nobody can buy it later at any price.
The land is the mission
First we help the community throw great events in the city. Then, together, we work toward acquiring festival grounds held cooperatively, land stewarded by the members, for community use, for good. Every show, every hoodie, every new member moves that day closer.
The roadmap lays out exactly how we get there, one rung at a time.
Who's behind this
A Denver founding team running a Colorado cooperative, structured the way it should be. It gets built by whoever turns up, which is the whole point, and why the form below exists.
Get the first invite
One form, whole movement. Email is all we need. The rest is optional.