The Annual Art Festival
Normally during this time of year, I’m prepping for early spring concerts with a two or more groups in the greater Los Angeles community. The musical season is fairly jam-packed between August and June. If it’s not sacred works, it’s new works getting their due premiere. Or we’re working on annual fundraisers, because the arts simply cannot thrive without support from the community.
This year is different. I took time out, because I signed up for an equally important project. My daughter’s school hosts an annual art festival, called ArtFest. Because the greater arts community is nothing without arts education, I signed up to participate as co-chair for this year’s ArtFest. Co-chair, because there’s no way such a big event can be organized by one person, and the other co-chair just had a baby.
With approximately 500 students, our goal is to showcase two pieces of artwork from each student for four glorious hours this April. We also host a concert, where each student gets an opportunity to perform as an ensemble. We recognize students who have won awards in PTA sponsored creative expressions competitions, and we take this time to thank the art and music teachers for their hard work during the school year. While the festival runs, we have several different working art stations for students and guests to create new art.
The event is hosted as an open house to the families at the school, and the hosting neighborhood. It’s a tradition that has been part of the community for decades, and I’m excited to be helping facilitate this for 2020 and 2021.
There’s a catch. Because it’s a one-day event, family and friends outside of the community can blink miss it. Because we have 500 students, teachers have to pick and choose what artwork is deemed worthy of display. Because we occasionally have technical difficulties, sometimes the concert runs long, and students miss the opportunity to immerse themselves in the art stations. This year, we’re trying to revise ArtFest so that the experience is more enjoyable, but that means starting from scratch.
Over the past few months, the PTA board has been looking into the possibility of creating a digital art database for parents and friends of the community to see their favorite students’ artwork evolve over the year. There are digital database archives available but finding the right group for our schools is not easy.
This year, our district’s Educational Foundation created a program which immerses Kindergarten and 5th grade classrooms throughout the city in an immersive “School of Rock” type of program. Our school’s 5th grade is one of the lucky recipients and will make their debut at ArtFest this year.
To accommodate this program, we have streamlined the concert a little. In previous years, choirs from the neighboring middle and high schools have come to perform at ArtFest. This year, it’s just our kids. To be fair, I’ve watched our students in previous concerts. They’re not really paying attention to the middle and high school groups anyway. Maybe this year, the revised program will catch their interest.
For the art stations, we’re in talks with artists from the greater community. If we can, we want to bring in some new ideas. Already, we offer a graphic arts station, a clay station, chalk art station, and ceramic painting station. This year, we’re offering a ‘food art’ station, and we hoping to offer a woodworking station.
In order for all of this to happen, a lot of time and money has to go into such projects. On top of funding student field trips and teacher supply requests, the PTA for our school raises money to fund art classes. Unfortunately, art programs are not budgeted in schools, so the PTA works hard to help provide this for students. This year, donations have been lower. Not just with our PTA, but with performing and visual arts programs across the country. While there is plenty of speculation, we don’t know why giving to the arts is down overall.
It’s my fervent hope that by signing up as ArtFest co-chair, some of these new ideas will not only spark creativity in our community but inspire our community to continue to support the arts. If we don’t inspire art and creativity with our children, then the arts and performing arts world will wither. Taking two months off from performing to help foster inspiration in our students and community is the least I can do as an artist.
This year is different. I took time out, because I signed up for an equally important project. My daughter’s school hosts an annual art festival, called ArtFest. Because the greater arts community is nothing without arts education, I signed up to participate as co-chair for this year’s ArtFest. Co-chair, because there’s no way such a big event can be organized by one person, and the other co-chair just had a baby.
With approximately 500 students, our goal is to showcase two pieces of artwork from each student for four glorious hours this April. We also host a concert, where each student gets an opportunity to perform as an ensemble. We recognize students who have won awards in PTA sponsored creative expressions competitions, and we take this time to thank the art and music teachers for their hard work during the school year. While the festival runs, we have several different working art stations for students and guests to create new art.
The event is hosted as an open house to the families at the school, and the hosting neighborhood. It’s a tradition that has been part of the community for decades, and I’m excited to be helping facilitate this for 2020 and 2021.
There’s a catch. Because it’s a one-day event, family and friends outside of the community can blink miss it. Because we have 500 students, teachers have to pick and choose what artwork is deemed worthy of display. Because we occasionally have technical difficulties, sometimes the concert runs long, and students miss the opportunity to immerse themselves in the art stations. This year, we’re trying to revise ArtFest so that the experience is more enjoyable, but that means starting from scratch.
Over the past few months, the PTA board has been looking into the possibility of creating a digital art database for parents and friends of the community to see their favorite students’ artwork evolve over the year. There are digital database archives available but finding the right group for our schools is not easy.
This year, our district’s Educational Foundation created a program which immerses Kindergarten and 5th grade classrooms throughout the city in an immersive “School of Rock” type of program. Our school’s 5th grade is one of the lucky recipients and will make their debut at ArtFest this year.
To accommodate this program, we have streamlined the concert a little. In previous years, choirs from the neighboring middle and high schools have come to perform at ArtFest. This year, it’s just our kids. To be fair, I’ve watched our students in previous concerts. They’re not really paying attention to the middle and high school groups anyway. Maybe this year, the revised program will catch their interest.
For the art stations, we’re in talks with artists from the greater community. If we can, we want to bring in some new ideas. Already, we offer a graphic arts station, a clay station, chalk art station, and ceramic painting station. This year, we’re offering a ‘food art’ station, and we hoping to offer a woodworking station.
In order for all of this to happen, a lot of time and money has to go into such projects. On top of funding student field trips and teacher supply requests, the PTA for our school raises money to fund art classes. Unfortunately, art programs are not budgeted in schools, so the PTA works hard to help provide this for students. This year, donations have been lower. Not just with our PTA, but with performing and visual arts programs across the country. While there is plenty of speculation, we don’t know why giving to the arts is down overall.
It’s my fervent hope that by signing up as ArtFest co-chair, some of these new ideas will not only spark creativity in our community but inspire our community to continue to support the arts. If we don’t inspire art and creativity with our children, then the arts and performing arts world will wither. Taking two months off from performing to help foster inspiration in our students and community is the least I can do as an artist.