The Lawrence Arts Center’s Free State Festival is moving beyond the film house this year, heading outside and adding music, art and ideas to the week’s festivities.

With a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, the arts center was able to vastly expand the festival this year. Officially kicking off June 25, the five-day festival will feature panel discussions on big-think topics, public art and outdoor concerts, including guitarist Johnny Winter, who will start things off with a concert.

“Our idea is that Lawrence can capitalize on our very rich history and the investments we’ve already made in art, and begin to create a distinctive identity for itself as a place to come to for art and a place to live if you’re an artist,” said Susan Tate, arts center CEO.

Tate hopes the festival will draw people not just from the area but from around the country, with folks going from event to event as they please, guided by their interests, she said.

The week’s programming will unofficially begin with a pre-festival performance by comedian, filmmaker, musician and author Marc Maron, who has performed for HBO and David Letterman and was on Time magazine’s short list of the most influential people.

With the arts center organizing things, there will be art, too, of course. Big art. Building-sized art.

Organizers plan to project visual pieces onto downtown buildings, including Weaver’s and the AT&T tower on Vermont Street. Ben Ahlvers, director of exhibitions for the arts center, said the projected art pieces are meant to spark conversations and be pieces of public art.

“It’s not just about throwing any image up on a wall,” he said. As a whole, Ahlvers said the center tried to program the festival so people would experience it as a “a good meal” — one event with many components.

The one thing that’s not new this year is the competitive film festival, which has been a Lawrence tradition for five years. Marlo Angell, digital media director at the arts center, has curated the film festival in that time. Angell said this year’s series will include movies that do innovative things with soundtracks or center on music.

The goal is to highlight the city’s history as a music destination and to complement the live music of this year’s festival, such as a documentary on Johnny Winter as well as a film about Grant Hart, former drummer and songwriter for the punk band Hüsker Dü, who will be performing after the screening.

Angell has also been working with students at the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence and arts-based social service agency Van Go Inc. to help them produce their own short films, which will be aired during the festival.

Partnering with Kansas University and The World Company, which owns the Journal-World, the festival will also host what Tate calls “intimate” talks on intellectual topics, including water issues, technology and art, graphic novels and more.

For more information or to purchase tickets, go to freestatefestival.org.