Anchors AWU: Anthro Weekend Utah marks seventh year celebrating artistry, inclusivity of furry fandom
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- A father and daughter team attend Anthro Weekend Utah on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025.
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- A group shot of the majority of the 2,601 furries who attended Anthro Weekend Utah 2025 earlier in August.
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- A cutout of Arc — one of the mascots of Anthro Weekend Utah — is put up for auction during the convention’s final day on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025.
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- Ulmar Vice celebrates winning the dance competition at Anthro Weekend Utah on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025.
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- Furries participate in the Street Animals car show during Anthro Weekend Utah on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025.
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- Anthro Weekend Utah co-founder and co-manager Giga presents a piece of art depicting one of the convention’s mascots — Arc — for a charity auction during the convention’s final day on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025. By popular demand of the audience, they would also eventually auction off their shirt. This year, the convention’s charity events raised nearly $35,000 for Nuzzles & Co of Park City.
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- From left, Milo, Giga, JoJo and JD Puppy get the audience hyped for Anthro Weekend Utah’s dance competition Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025.
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- Furries participate in the Street Animals car show during Anthro Weekend Utah on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025.
LAYTON –The Davis Conference Center played host to a unique phenomenon last weekend.
For three days, wolves, foxes, cats, lions, sharks, dragons, Pokémon, dogs of many breeds and a bevy of other creatures big and small descended on the conference center for a weekend of celebration, sea shanties and pirate’s treasure.
You aren’t reading about the writer’s fever dreams — this was the seventh installment of Anthro Weekend Utah, or AWU. This convention marked Utah’s latest chance for people near and far to celebrate furry fandom with art, creative costumes and camaraderie against the backdrop of the pirate-heavy theme “Anchors AWU — Battle of the Barkaneers.”
Anchors AWU
Leading the charge is convention chair and founder “Giga.”
“This convention started as sort of a spiritual successor to a previous event that was held in Utah,” they said. “It really is just a gathering of all of the furry community, the people who are interested in anthropomorphic art performance and things like that.”
But one of the biggest focuses of the event, Giga added, is the artistry that comes with the fandom.
“We really just try to put the focus on the artists,” they said. “We have a huge hall full of vendors. We have all of these people in custom-made costumes — I polled them earlier (Saturday) — about half of them built them themselves and the other half commissioned an artist to build them. We have a music festival … with live bands and performances, and on the other nights we have live DJs playing.”
History is rife with examples of humankind melding itself and the animal kingdom. Ancient Egyptians worshipped several deities such as Anubis and Bastet, which were depicted as bipedal entities with the heads of animals. Werewolf folklore in which men turn to upright beasts are traced back millennia. And fiction properties across mediums aimed at all age groups have cast sentient and even human-like animals into human society.
It’s from these fictional worlds that Giga said furry fandom has drawn much of its inspiration.
“The furry fandom, in a nutshell, is people who really like anthropomorphic characters and animal art,” they said. “If you think about things like old-school Disney, things like Robin Hood or new-school — things like ‘Zootopia’ — if you’re a fan of that, maybe you might fit into the furry community. It really is just kind of how you feel.”
Giga said AWU came about in 2017 and is in its seventh operating year after skipping 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It has grown so much,” they said. “Our first year was a two-day convention. … It started with me and my convention co-chair; his name is JoJo. There was a previous event here and it had just closed its doors and they weren’t hosting it anymore. We were kind of bummed and decided to talk about it a little bit. I ran some numbers and thought to myself, ‘You know, if we wanted to, I think if we brought in just this many people — about 250 people — we would be able to break even.'”
From there, Giga and JoJo began to organize the first Anthro Weekend Utah.
“I was not prepared for it, but we dove into it head-first, did a lot of small, cheap and easy marketing on YouTube and social media,” Giga said. “With our poor, unprepared selves who had never hosted any event before, we managed to bring in almost 500 people.”
They said that while their math had been a bit off initially, the 2017 convention broke even, and it opened doors for the future of AWU.
“I had very bad math,” they said. “I’m very grateful we got almost twice as many as we expected because, otherwise, I would’ve owed a lot of money. But we got enough people that we were able to move to this larger convention space in Layton, and every year we’ve been growing a little bit more.”
What started out as a two-day event has morphed into a full three days of activities that includes a fursuit parade, dances, appearances by wildlife groups, a dance competition, an arcade, and a charity casino and charity auction, which during AWU 2025 raised nearly $35,000 for Nuzzles & Co Pet Rescue and Adoption of Park City. The ’25 convention also included workshops and seminars for artists and authors along with meet-ups for everyone from farming furs, Southern Utah furs and Latter-day Saint furs.
AWU co-chair and co-founder JoJo told the Standard-Examiner he’s amazed with the growth that he’s seen since 2017.
“Seeing how many people are here is crazy,” he said. “It blows my mind every single time that this many people come to this convention every single year and it keeps getting bigger and bigger.”
Also helping the convention come together is AWU AV Director “Snowfall.”
“I’ve been a furry since 2016,” he told the Standard-Examiner. “I was an attendee the first time in 2017, I think it was, at the Radisson.”
After DJing at the 2019 convention, he started to volunteer in 2022.
“It’s cool to watch it become more common knowledge,” he said. “I think in the olden days of the fandom, or even as recently as 10 years ago, there’s been a stigmatized view of the fandom because in the mainstream media, there’s that shock value with it. It’s been fun to kind of see it grow to more people that it’s more than that.”
AWU 2025 also included panels and special guests such as artist and illustrator Aycee of Boise, Idaho.
“I’ve been doing furry art since I was about 15, and I’m 35 now,” they told the Standard-Examiner.
Aycee said part of the reason they got into art was down to a lack of carbonated beverages at home.
“When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t let me have soda, and there was soda at the school in a vending machine,” they said. “I wanted to buy soda from the school so I started doing commissions online, and the people who wanted to buy it the most were furries because I drew animal art.”
Aycee added that the fandom has been fun to draw for as well as be a part of.
“Doing art for them is the most fun job I’ve ever had in my entire life,” they said. “Everyone’s really nice. They’re so excited about art — they love original art, they have original characters. It’s so fun to draw.”
A welcoming space
Over the years, the furry fandom has become a refuge of sorts for several groups of people.
Giga said that, from their experience, some misconceptions have arisen about the furry community as a result of its origins.
“There is kind of a laser pointed down the sights at the furry community ever since its inception because it was created by queer individuals in the LGBTQ+ community,” they said.
Among those misconceptions has been that it is a space strictly revolving around adult themes.
“The larger part of the community very much is an all-ages, very friendly community,” Giga said. “Especially here in Utah. We have a lot of people who are coming here really to just express themselves, be themselves and experience the arts and all the love that can be found around, dress up in costume and hang out, and that’s what most of the community is.”
They explained that AWU goes out of its way to make sure it remains a safe place for all ages.
“AWU, specicifically, is a very all-ages and very friendly to anyone space,” they said. “We have ‘PG’ signs up as you enter just to make sure everybody is aware that, as a space, this is for everybody, and we have a very amazing security team to make sure that stays that way.”
Additionally, the furry community has been portrayed in a negative light recently with unfounded accusations that younger members of the fandom have become disruptive in class or are even demanding — and receiving — litter boxes in school bathrooms.
“The FURRIES Act out of Texas, which had the claim that furries are using litter boxes and wanted to kick children who barked out of school — just really silly legislation that I believe is meant to distract from real problems, real issues, and it’s meant to target minority groups like the transgender community, because they are so comfortable here,” Giga said. “‘Furry’ has become a dogwhistle in a lot of circles for transgender people.”
They said the community is ultimately open to all.
“The furry community is welcoming to everybody — it’s very much a safe space and it’s a home that I wish that I had when I was a young queer person growing up. And as somebody who can provide that to people now, I just feel incredibly privileged and incredibly honored to create those safe spaces,” they said. “The furry community is a place where you can walk in with a character, basically put on a completely new identity that is unique to who you are, be yourself in a way you haven’t been accepted as before and, no matter what, you are instantly accepted.
“You can show up as a fox, a wolf, whatever else and immediately everybody will call you by your character name, they’ll refer to you by the pronouns that you would like to use, and there’s just never been any judgement around that. I think, as such an accepting space, it is incredibly attractive to LGBTQ+ people to show up and be perceived the way they’ve always wanted to be perceived.”
Giga also noted that it’s not just the LGBTQ+ community that furry fandom has opened its doors to and provided a safe space for over the years.
“There’s a lot of neurodivergent and disabled people attending the convention as well, and it’s a very similar situation where they get to choose who they want to be and how they want to be perceived for the weekend,” they said. “People are willing to come here in the 100-degree heat in the middle of the Utah summer to put on what is essentially a full-body rug and walk around and hang out with their friends and have a great time, experience the art and performance and also give to charity.”
JoJo said the inclusivity is one of the fandom’s most rewarding qualities.
“The fandom is wonderful, and it’s a wonderful community that allows you to be yourself and to express yourself in many different ways, shapes and form,” he said. “I love it a lot to be able to see people express themselves and just kind of not have to worry about dressing up in a silly little costume. They can just feel good about themselves and have fun doing it.”
The future
During AWU 2025’s closing ceremonies, it was announced that attendance this year had been 2,601 — a record that was a long way from the fewer than 500 people who attended the inaugural event in 2017.
Giga said they only expect the fandom to continue to grow — and the convention to grow along with it.
“The fandom is growing exponentially every year,” they said. “As it grows every year, especially among younger and younger communities and people who are finding out about the fandom online, it’s also becoming this worldwide community.”
And no matter how it may grow, JoJo said AWU will remain the space that it’s been for years.
“I know that we can continue to make this a safe space for people, especially the LGBTQ+ community, and I hope that we can continue to provide that for them,” he said. “I will do everything that I can to ensure that it stays that way.”
And as for the future for Anthro Weekend Utah, the convention will return to the Davis Conference Center from July 31-Aug. 2, 2026, with the theme “Mech vs. Kaiju, PAWSific Rim!”
For more on Anthro Weekend Utah, visit https://anthroweekendutah.org/.
