Desert Waves Is Challenging the Culture of Consumption in Las Vegas

At the 2026 Desert Waves Film & Music Festival, founder Alicia Borja and creative director Brianna Florian added live music to the program and pushed a bigger idea: a creative community that gives Las Vegas artists a reason to stay.

Film screenings, filmmaker Q&As, industry panels, and speed networking brought creatives together at the 2026 Desert Waves Film & Music Festival. But the experience didn’t stop at the screen. The stage also made room for a different kind of storytelling: live music. King jaRED, Beverly Chillz, Dama Vicke, and OLMECA were among the artists bringing the first live music program to a festival that had spent its first two years focused on film. In a city built on live entertainment, the addition felt right at home. After all, film and music have always been creative partners, each capable of making the other more powerful. But for Desert Waves, this was about more than expanding the program.

Founded by Alicia Borja in 2024, Desert Waves was created to address a gap in Las Vegas’s independent film community. Borja arrived in the city in 2018 while on active duty, bringing with her a background in theater, acting, and writing. After participating in the 48 Hour Film Project in 2021, she found an entry point into the local filmmaking scene. What she wanted next was a place for filmmakers to continue growing: somewhere to screen their work, meet collaborators, and build relationships beyond a single competition. Desert Waves began with that purpose, pairing film screenings with monthly meetups designed to keep creatives connected throughout the year.

For Borja, however, film was never meant to be the limit. She had envisioned a festival that could bring together creatives who often worked in separate corners of the city, from filmmakers to musicians and more. Beyond the film programming, the festival offered a range of activations designed to make the experience more interactive and inviting. A podcast station gave creatives an opportunity to share their voices, while food trucks, a VIP lounge for artists and filmmakers, photo opportunities, and even a coloring station added to the weekend’s atmosphere. The festival also introduced the Music Video Lab, a collaboration with Desert Cactus Films that paired 10 directors with 10 musicians to produce original music videos in just 30 days, with the finished projects premiering on the big screen. Rather than simply presenting creative work, Desert Waves was creating opportunities for people across different disciplines to make something together.

That kind of expansion requires people willing to turn a vision into something tangible. Brianna Florian, Desert Waves’ Operations Manager and Creative Director, initially found herself offering Borja ideas for what the festival could become. Eventually, she realized those ideas needed someone to help bring them to life—and stepped into a larger role. An event producer by trade, Florian took on unfamiliar territory this year, from navigating contracts to coordinating talent and new activations. Their motto, “The Delulu Is the Solulu,” might sound familiar to K-pop fans, but the philosophy behind it is universal: sometimes you have to believe in the possibility of something before you know exactly how to make it happen. For the Desert Waves team, that meant being willing to try, learn, and figure things out along the way.

The vision also depended on collaboration beyond the core team. Coco Jenkins of Nothing To Do Las Vegas helped shape the live music experience, with NTDLV curating the lineup and Jenkins stepping behind the decks as a DJ. Across the festival, Borja and Florian emphasized the importance of trusting the people around them, staying open to other ideas, and allowing the collective vision to become bigger than any one person’s plan. For Borja, leadership meant knowing when to let go. Because sometimes another person’s idea is better, and making room for it is part of building something together.

That openness reflects the deeper purpose at the heart of Desert Waves: creating a space where people feel seen, heard, and welcome. Borja and Florian recalled that one attendee who had traveled from Atlanta was struck by the warmth between the people organizing the festival, the performers, and the wider creative community. The response stayed with them because it spoke to something they hoped others would experience, too. A festival can bring people into the same room, but community grows when those people leave wanting to collaborate again.

A festival can bring people into the same room, but community grows when those people leave wanting to collaborate again.

With monthly meetups already in place, Desert Waves is building toward more workshops, educational programming, and youth initiatives. Borja also hopes to one day extend the festival into the Arts District, inviting audiences to experience more of the creative life unfolding across the neighborhood.

For years, people have come to Las Vegas, as Borja put it, like locusts, consuming the entertainment, taking in what the city has to offer, and then leaving. But the city’s creative future depends on more than what visitors can buy a ticket to see. It depends on the people making things here, the spaces that bring them together, and the relationships that give them a reason to stay. Desert Waves is still growing, with its next chapter taking shape. The goal isn’t simply to create a bigger festival. It’s to continue building a creative community with room for more voices, more collaboration, and more possibility.