This Friday, Chicago will be taken over by college students, dropouts, hippies, yuppies, children, parents and everyone else drawn in by the lights. Fourteen hours of dance, art, performance and activity will rock the Loop, drawing thousands of visitors to the center of the city. Their reign will end Saturday at sunrise with a retrospective in Millennium Park.

This is Looptopia, a 14-hour carnival set to take place May 2nd through 3rd between the Chicago River and Congress Parkway, from Clark Street to Columbus Drive. Last year, the inaugural Looptopia drew over 200,000 visitors to the Loop, home of the largest college population in Illinois, according to a press release.

Ty Tabing, the executive director of the Chicago Loop Alliance and the creator of Looptopia, thinks it’s a perfect event for college students.

“Students tend to have the stamina to stay up all night. I think there’s a lot of ways for students at Northwestern to step up. Some of the schools in the Loop area are participating. DePaul and Harold Washington will be open all night,” says Tabing. “The Loop’s really going to have a lot going on that night.”

While Northwestern University has not announced any plans to participate in the festivities, student dance group Tonik Tap will perform in Daley Plaza at 9:45 p.m.

Harold Washington College will open its doors until 2 a.m., allowing the public to come and paint part of a mural or create a ceramic tile.

“The students are involved in all of it,” says George Bickford, assistant dean of instruction at Harold Washington College.

Students will participate in “Harold Washington Idol,” an American Idol-style singing competition, the finals of which will take place during Looptopia.

If American Idol isn’t really your thing, there will be tons of art, music and theater. Local artists will display their work throughout the Loop, and Blick Art Supplies hosts a collegiate art competition in their Loop area store.

A BRICKHEADZ break-dancer performs for last year’s Looptopia. Photo courtesy of Looptopia.

Music fans can head to Macy’s to hear DJs in “Club Looptopia,” or see any of the live bands and dance groups that will be performing throughout the Loop, including break-dancing troupe BRICKHEADZ, and rock bands White Hot Knife and Flowers for Dorian.

For theater geeks, Broadway in Chicago will present “Late Night Cabaret,” featuring actors from several of their sellout shows such as “Wicked” and “Jersey Boys,” and the Auditorium Theater will be open all night for a variety of comedy shows.

But best of all, there will be circuses. Many circuses. According to Looptopia, The Le Vorris and Vox circus troupes will be “telling fairy tales through circus arts,” the Midnight Circus’s Soul Sonic Circus will be “an interactive acrobatic and musical explosion,” and Kooza Kite Action, of the Cirque du Soleil, will be “flying into Looptopia to cause a scene.”

In offering these and many more activities, The Chicago Loop Alliance hopes to highlight all of the Loop’s cultural offerings and draw people into Chicago who wouldn’t otherwise visit.

“It is a chance to see the rebirth of today’s Loop,” says Tabing.