By Megan Sanders, October 21, 2025
The city of Pomona hosted its downtown Halloween themed art walk Oct. 11, which was bursting with creativity, thrills and sweet treats with the goal of bringing the public together and celebrating different cultures.
Downtown Pomona’s Art Walk is a free, five–hour event the city hosts at 197 W. Second St. Artists. Food vendors and other small businesses set up booths to draw in large crowds the second Saturday of each month.
This month’s art walk was full of Halloween themed activities, from trick-or-treating to a haunted house.
Many people dressed up to participate in the costume contest. The winners in each age group won a cash prize ranging from $100 to $250. Some people dressed up as scary clowns, while others took a different approach by dressing up as cartoon characters, some even dressing up their dogs.
As people made their way around the event, live music from the Shaun Diamond Stage and a DJ booth flooded the streets.
Just behind the DJ booth was a walkway to an art exhibit inside The School of Arts and Enterprise where students’ Halloween and horror-themed artwork covered the walls.
According to Mark Bunner, a visual art teacher at the school, this is one of 12 art galleries the school hosts a year. Most of the students complete their projects in a month or less.
“It’s the one they get the most excited for, because we tell them this is supposed to be scary,” Bunner said. “It’s October, so they just go wild.”
More than 30 live artists lined the block and painted on large canvases for people to walk by and see their unique processes and the work put into each creation.
Cal Poly Pomona’s Community Innovation Hub was one of the booths set up in the mix of all the excitement. The Innovation Hub offers many different types of workshops with the goal of helping people thrive in the workforce.
According to Program Coordinator Santino Lopez, this is the third art walk the Innovation Hub has participated in. He has seen a rise in numbers of those who utilize the Innovation Hub after attending.
“I think it’s super important for us and for them because we’re offering business support, entrepreneurship assistance and technical skills at the hub,” Lopez said. “It’s great because you don’t have to go to Cal Poly to get it, you can come to downtown to get it.”
Most of the foot traffic pedaled to the center of it all, where people spent time in the haunted house or dancing to live music near the stage.
According to CPP alumnus Peyton Bellinger, who works for the city of Pomona’s community services, the monthly art walks are a great way to learn and connect with other cultures and realize being different from other people isn’t a bad thing.
“If you know you are different from somebody, you might have different areas of expertise that they don’t have, and then you can connect with your differences and try to find common ground,” Bellinger said.
The next art walk will be the Downtown Hasta La Muerte Nov. 8, and will have food, live music, altars and a car show.
