By Lori McCue

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You know this by now: D.C. is a town of museums and public art that’s free more often than not. But art in D.C. is still not accessible enough for Halcyon CEO Kate Goodall. So when her social entrepreneurship incubator developed the inaugural By The People festival, which begins tomorrow in D.C., her team added free courtesy shuttles that travel among the festival sites for patrons every 20 minutes. Oh, and a truck will be driving all around town with screens displaying video and digital art. And yes, almost all of it is free. It’s almost like you have no good excuse not to interact with By The People’s art this weekend.

“We really wanted to make sure everybody has ability to participate in some way,” Goodall says.

In By The People, Goodall wanted to build something like the South By Southwest festival in Austin: an event that would gather creative people from all over the country for a weekend of “arts and dialogue.”

“Many, many people from government or arts institutions or the tech sector have traveled [to SXSW] for years and have come back and always said ‘Why don’t we do something like that?’” Goodall says. The D.C. government, which spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to have a presence at SXSW, is among By The People’s financial backers: The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Development and the Office of Cable Television, Film, Music, and Entertainment both contributed grants to the project.

Much like SXSW, By The People scatters its arts installations and events—plenty of them free—across its city. Five hubs—the Washington National Cathedral, Union Market, the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, The Parks at Walter Reed, and THEARC—have been turned into galleries that will host textile pieces, video installations, sculptures, paintings, and performances. Spreading the art out was deliberate, Goodall says.

“It came down to deciding we wanted to make sure we’re in each quadrant,” she says. For example, “I’m hoping someone from Ward 3 will go to Ward 5 for the first time” to check out some pieces of the festival.

Each of the artists commissioned—more than 80 in total—were given only the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to guide the pieces they brought to the fest. Artists have responded with a variety of interpretations: D.C.-based Dan Steinhilber, for example, created an enormous inflatable structure installed at the Arts and Industries Building, with multiple holes for people to stick their heads into. His interpretation of “liberty,” Goodall explains, was to explore what real-life interaction with strangers looks like in the age of the internet. The Wolf Trap Opera, meanwhile, is popping up with performances on Saturday at Union market and the Arts and Industries Building that embrace the festival’s themes through song.

“Seeing what people come up with and their vastly different interpretations, that’s the point,” Goodall says. “It’s the fact that these principles belong to all of us and we agree on them, but we differ on them, too.”

The “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” theme continues during the dialogue portion of the festival on Thursday at the United States Institute of Peace, featuring conversations between scientists, policymakers, and economists.

“We’re getting rid of very individualistic Ted Talk-style speeches or the three-person panel,” Goodall says. “We’re just putting people on stage together and having a discussion.”

Library of Congress Astrobiology Chair Lucianne Walkowicz and Indian Law Resource Center Director Armstrong Wiggins are addressing “life” with a conversation on space exploration; Palestinian activist Yousef Bashir and Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi tackle “liberty” by considering paths to peace in the Middle East; and Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Robert Waldinger will talk about our online “pursuit of happiness” with game studio Funomena’s CEO Robin Hunicke.

Seats at the dialogues are reserved by free reservation. A handful of performances are ticketed, including the tonight’s kickoff at the Anthem: a Ray LaMontagne and Neko Case concert that was originally supposed to take place at Merriweather Post Pavilion, but was moved after I.M.P. “wanted to be involved,” Goodall says. Halcyon is encouraging patrons to register ahead of time for free attendance at all the non-ticketed events throughout the festival, to bypass the lines they expect to form at the festival sites.

Though the fest’s debut is ambitious, Goodall calls this first year “baby steps” toward a massive annual event.

“South By started as a little tiny music concert back in the ’80s,” she says. “I think the arts can be a catalyst for something like that.”