The arrival of spring has perennially signified the Main Green's transformation into a space for outdoor reading, protesting, lounging and recreating. On Saturday from noon to 4 p.m., the traditional warm weather functions of the Green and surrounding buildings will be expanded to house diverse modes of artistic expression during the Student Creative Arts Council's first annual arts festival.
Festival chair Corey Solinger '05 said that the festival will be composed of outdoor and indoor events. Students will be able to enjoy three live bands, an Asian drumming circle, a silk screening station, sidewalk art and a mural in progress outside.
Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE), a Swearer Center for Public Service program offering creative arts workshops in prisons, will also conduct a fundraising bake sale. Festival-goers can head indoors to Sayles Hall to participate in creative writing workshops in fiction, theater and poetry.
Solinger said that some student art may be displayed in Petteruti Lounge, which is serving as a registration center for the weekend's Ivy Film Festival.
The arts festival was originally planned for the fall, but organizational difficulties forced its postponement until the return of good weather in the spring, Solinger said. The council hopes that the open space of the Main Green will foster interaction between the many disciplines that are defined as "creative arts," she said.
The council's defining goals are to increase visibility of and participation in the arts at Brown, and as such the festival is incorporating participatory events. The writing workshops, hosted by graduate students in English, will include spontaneous writing exercises and do not assume that students will arrive with a work in progress. The entire campus community is encouraged to contribute to the mural on the Main Green and create a silk-screened product, Solinger said. The three bands scheduled to perform - The Good Days, The Trophy Wives and Cheap Labor - are all Brown student bands.
Solinger said she hopes the festival will extend beyond showcasing Brown's currently identified artists. "We hope (the festival) will excite students who don't consider themselves as artists about the creative process," she said.
