Culture doesn’t always have to be the wildest, most exotic thing you can imagine. It can be as easy as something right outside your front door. While it can be a foreign dish or an interesting cosmopolitan music taste, it can be the Southern barbecue that you’ve always enjoyed with your family or the ballroom dancing lessons you’ve recently taken.

This Thursday, April 21, from 6-10 p.m. in the Coleman Coliseum, Crimson Culture will be giving students and Tuscaloosa community members the chance to discover what culture in Tuscaloosa entails.

The event is free and open to the public, including non-students, and there will be a variety of free food from local Tuscaloosa vendors, T-shirt and water bottle giveaways, prizes and music.

The cultural booths that will be present at the event will include a photo booth, tie dye flags, henna tattoos and more, while the performances will include artists from the Druid City Band, The Lamb Family & Violins, UA Ballroom Dancers and more. A full list of booths and performances is available on the Crimson Culture Facebook event page.

There will be a CrimsonRide shuttle taking students to and from Coleman Coliseum from the Ferguson Center throughout the event.

Lizzie Yarbrough, a graduate assistant at the Ferguson Center, was one of the planners for the event, which took about two months of planning. She described the event as having “a little bit of everything.

“It’s been on our calendar and we played it out as it came,” Yarbrough said. “The hardcore planning and conceptualizing started two months ago.

“The whole point of Crimson Culture is to show value in how unique we are in Tuscaloosa and how all of the cultures blend in on campus,” Yarbrough said. “There will be local bands, a station for henna tattoos, origami, lots of clubs, a clay co-op from Kentuck, a local artist from Gordo, Ala., and the Alabama Art Kitchen, just to name a few.”

Yarbrough said the event has occurred once before, and this year will be a variation of last year’s event.

“It was Crimson Culture Week at that time,” Yarbrough said. “There was something different every day. We decided it was a better use of our resources to make it a big one day event.”

Wesley H. Rorex, the Ferguson Gallery coordinator, helped with the creative design for the event, including setting up the image and concept.

Rorex also stressed the importance that the Crimson Culture team has put on variety.

“We tried to look at different possibilities for booths among UA organizations and to really think outside the box on this one,” Rorex said. “We didn’t want to just have, for example, the Chinese Culture Club. There is not just that tangible, obvious culture at UA; there is also that intangible culture. You will be seeing a lot of very cultural groups, groups that are Alabama culture as well.”

Yarbrough said students should attend the event because everybody can find something that will interest them.

“One cool thing our team has done is look at what cultures there are on campus and find a way to include everything that we’ve seen on campus,” Yarborough said. “It’s a great opportunity to learn about new culture, and not in a classroom setting.”

“This will open the students’ eyes to what they may not know about the University,” Rorex said. “It might increase their pride about what is here at UA. The event is jam-packed full of stuff — there is stuff going on all night.”

The food offered at the event ranges from local culture to international cuisine.

“Remember that barbecue is just as cultural as anything else,” Yarbrough said.

“The food is going to be phenomenal,” Rorex said. “Everywhere in town you haven’t tried before will be here to try for free.”

They plan for the event to occur annually starting this year.

“We definitely encourage students to come out,” Yarbrough said. “We know it’s crunch time and the end of the semester and money is tight but it’s free. It’ll be a really fun night for everyone involved.”

“Once you see the inside and experience it one time it will be something that lasts and that people will look forward to every year,” Rorex said.