MM - MLK Marade & Denver Art Museum Co-Creativity in Café Gío & Sensory Garden.

This year’s annual 2026 Denver MLK Marade once again is a symbolic walk. We will be walking away from repeating our most pain-filled nightmares, and walking toward continuing to grow our most joy-filled dreams.

This link to the 2026 MLK Marade poster is an invitation, for people of all ages, to set our intentions to walk toward a future, which each of us would love to co-creatively share.

The Marade ends a block away from the Denver Art Museum's beautiful round glass tile Martin Building. After the Marade, from noon to 2 pm, my husband Richard and I are inviting our collaborative Meetup group members, from the Museum Muser, TTWalks, and Beckwourth Doers, to share E-STEAM co-creative playtime, with us, during lunch in the Denver Art Museum’s Café Gío, and Sensory Garden.

Enter the DAM, from the Martin Building’s north facing doors, and turn left to meet us in Café Gío. Richard and Fran will be wearing E-STEAM nametags.

No admission tickets are required to enter Café Gío. However, entrance to the Sensory Garden requires a DAM admission ticket. Throughout the year, thanks to the Bellco Credit Union, children 18 years old and younger can have free admission to the DAM. Richard and I have 4 free adult tickets available on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Please RSVP on this event’s Museum Muser Meetup event site, for updates. Updates will be added to the Museum Muser event’s comment section. Together our collaborative Meetup group members may be able to offer additional discounts or free DAM tickets, for our 2-hour co-creativity time in the Denver Art Museum.

Co-creatively, it may be possible, for our three collaborative Meetup groups’ to inspire future annual co-creativity times, in the Martin Building’s awe-inspiring Bartlit Learning & Engagement Center, as a part of future annual MLK Marade events.

MLK MARADE
Schedule:
10 am to 11:45 am, Monday, January 19, 2026

(This is an annual 3rd Monday of January event. See the linked 2026 MLK Marade poster for details. There will be an opening ceremony, but no closing ceremony, due to construction in the Civic Center Park. Arrive early. This event goes on rain, snow or shine.)

Start Point to End Point:
Starting at the Martin Luther King Memorial, in Denver City Park.
Ending in the Lincoln Veteran’s Memorial Park (west of Civic Center Park

Where to Meet / How to find us:
RSVP on the Museum Muser event announcement, for updates in the Museum Muser group’s comments, from Fran Rew, on the day of the event. Fran loves to move around in the Marade to talk with new people. Richard is more consistently staying at one location. So the best way to meet with Fran and Richard in the Marade (before our time together in the DAM’s Café Gío) is to text Fran your Museum Muser RSVP’d name before the 10 a.m. opening ceremony, so that Fran can reply to your text, with the location where both Richard and Fran will be at 10 a.m. Fran’s text number is (720) 474-5182.

Parking - Start Point:

• 23rd Avenue & Colorado Boulevard, bordering the north side of Denver City Park.
• East High School Parking Lot northeast of the corner of Josephine Street & 16th Avenue.
• Carla Madison Rec Center southeast of the corner of Josephine Street & 16th Avenue.
• Plus street parking.

Parking - End Point:

• Street parking in downtown Denver is free on Martin Luther King Day, according to Denver’s meter holiday schedule.
• Closest covered parking lot, for paying by the number of hours parked, is adjacent to the Denver Art Museum’s first building. It’s called the Cultural Center Complex Garage, at 65 W 12th Ave, Denver, CO 80204, half a block west of Broadway, on 12th Avenue.
• RTD buses are available on Colfax, if you have parked your car near either the start point, or the end point.

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CO-CREATIVITY: E-STEAM PLAYTIME CO-CREATIVITY WITH AIR
I believe that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, may have actually been asking us to grow joy-filled co-creative compassionate connections. Dr. King said:

"True Compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.
It comes to see that the edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Is it possible for us to “restructure the edifice that produces beggars,” by growing joy-filled versus pain-filled compassionate co-creative connections?

One way for us to find out what is possible is by listening to our walking muscles. If we are listening to our walking muscles, we can hear each of our musculoskeletal walking connections telling us it just may be possible!

Why are our muscles telling us compassionate co-creative connections may be possible?

Because most of us were born with a musculoskeletal system that learned how to walk when we were babies! Our musculoskeletal walking connections began when our baby self set our intention to walk. We didn’t know how to walk, we just saw our parents, and realized it just may be possible for us to walk too.

As babies, we reduced our number of painful falls, by self-compassionately playing and practicing with our walking muscles. Each individual baby co-created playful movements. Each baby used their built-in gift of a balancing living energy design. Each baby’s built-in design, guided their many diverse regenerative musculoskeletal gifts.

Even as adults, these gifts of complex regenerating musculoskeletal balancing responses remain beyond our comprehensive understanding.

Even as adults, setting our intentions to walk remains our primary power, for connection with the co-creative possibility, of walking.

Each one of our complex regenerating musculoskeletal balancing responses, with each step we take individually and collaboratively, is a part of our much larger gift of the Economics of Living Energy itself.

The balancing Economics of Living Energy itself is what the first “E” of “E-STEAM” represents. This first “E” is what guides what’s possible, for all our individual and collaborative human co-creations of our most joy-filled dreams, of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math).

My husband Richard and I shared some of our favorite co-creativity examples of urban E-STEAM, in a 4-minute video, on the E-STEAM Love channel on YouTube. We titled this video “October Urban Celebrations of Co-Creativity with Air | Rooftop Farms and Gardens.”

In 2024, I began the video by jumping an E-STEAM origami jumping frog, on the rooftop farm of the Boston Medical Center. Like paper (or digital) money, the paper frog has no energy of its own. We have to store our personal gift of a balancing Economics of Living Energy, into our STEAM-designed folds, to enable this paper origami frog to jump. Human STEAM begins individually, and collaboratively, by co-creating with our gift of a balancing Economics of Living Energy.

During the MLK Marade, and during lunchtime, in the Denver Art Museum’s Café Gío, and sensory garden, Richard and I will be offering a gift of origami jumping frogs with a QR code to this video, along with a creative commons bookmark, with Dr. King’s 1967 quote about true compassion.

It would fill us with both gratitude and joy to co-creatively share this collaborative Museum Muser MLK Marade event with each of you.

— Fran and Richard Rew