FLINT, MI — The second annual Free City Art Festival Aug. 22-23 seeks to use art to connect more areas of the city.

"(The festival) will be distributed to try to connect the broader, what I like to call it, the greater downtown area," said Stephen Zacks, executive director of the Flint Public Art Project, which puts on the event.

The festival's inaugural year, 2013, took place on the grounds of Chevy Commons — a former industrial site more commonly known as Chevy in the Hole — which had sat neglected for years.

The idea then was to reimagine how such a space might be used again by the city.

This year, part of the festival will still take place at Chevy Commons but also at other sites surrounding Flint's downtown.

Zacks said there are lots of places near downtown Flint — an area typically thought of as the Saginaw Street corridor — that are ignored because the areas between sites don't seem so obviously walkable.

"Carriage Town and downtown ... they're so close but they don't have a sense of connection, a pathway. That's one reason that the Spencer project (an artistic home rehab effort by FPAP) might have the ability to extend the downtown area a little bit," Zacks said. "The same is true with Chevy Commons."

In addition to the grounds of Spencer Art House on University Avenue and Chevy Commons, there will also be art on display at Spring Grove, a wetland area where two abandoned silos sit just west of downtown; and a yet-to-be identified abandoned house on Stone Street.

Allen Gillers, one of FPAP's designers-in-residence, said that they're organizing a "bike brigade" that will take participants around to the various sites, timing them so they can catch the beginnings of various performances.

It won't be just any art. FPAP's specialty is public art, and that can mean a lot of things, but the displays are typically large, occasionally participatory, and often seek to challenge those who engage with them to think about things in new ways.

"This isn't a gallery, this is a site that can be used spatially," Gillers said. "We're interested in proposals that take advantage of the site."

For example, at the 2013 Free City festival, two artists held a silent dance party in which anyone could come, put ear buds in, and dance to their own tune. To anyone outside the dancing area (it was marked off by painted driftwood in a makeshift fence) it would look like people were dancing to ... nothing.

The theme for this year's festival is "sound and light."

Gillers said that they're open to a broad range of submissions, but that thinking about sound and light can be a good way to think about occupying spaces for the event — since occupying large spaces is what it's all about.

"There's this idea that we're trying to broaden or widen the range of artistic media that people use, and we're asking people to engage in things they don't always think about," he said. "Light and sound end up occupying much more space than a lot of other media. It's just a way to take advantage of this open space."

FPAP is also known for bringing outside artists into the area for their events — something that's brought them both praise and criticism — and Gillers said for this year's festival they'll be looking to showcase local, regional and national artists.

Zacks said those efforts mirror last year's event, which also used local and national artists.

"The feedback from the local artists embraced it more than anything we did all year," he said.

The festival will take place the same day as the Crim Festival of Races. Gillers said the events shouldn't interfere with each other, and that he's hoping that people who come for the Crim will stick around to see some art.