Now, more than ever, it’s becoming crucial for high-school students to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Express Yourself Arts Conference gives students interested in a career in the arts the opportunity to explore their interests, network with local professionals, and develop their personal skills.
Later this week, almost 100 high school students will gather at the Patterson Park Community Center to celebrate a common thread: a love of the arts. And the Business Education Partnership, Read To Succeed, Destination Rutherford, Middle Tennessee Electric Customers Care and the Friends of Linebaugh Library are joining together to let these kids know that a love of the arts can turn into a job.
The 2011 Express Yourself Arts Conference (EYAC), held on October 26, will encourage these students to explore, practice, and hone their skills, from painting to graphic design, writing to music criticism, music to theater.
The conference is all about focusing on the arts, and proving to these students that their talents don’t have to be accessories to their futures.
Lee Rennick, this year’s conference director and executive director of the Business Education Partnership, says the conference can also have a positive economic impact on the community.
“The Express Yourself Arts Conference offers students the opportunity to interact with those working in the arts,” Rennick says. “Often arts careers are overlooked, yet nationally, non-profit arts and cultural organizations have an economic impact of $166 billion dollars, leading to almost six million full-time jobs and almost eight billion in local taxes. This doesn’t even include the economic impact of for-profit companies, including the music and movie industries.”
Workshop leader Alex Blackwelder, a local photographer, says that she had a mentor in high school who encouraged her to pursue a career in art.
“Without her,” she says, “I never would have thought it was possible. I hope to encourage students to follow their passions even if those around them believe it's not possible."
Just look at all the arts professionals lending their skills to the conference as proof that the creative can become a career.
Workshop leaders also include Lee Rennick, teaching improv and a GLEE workshop; Linebaugh Library’s Roy Lee, teaching improv; Aaron Shapiro, MTSU professor and lauded poet and writer; Bracken Mayo, founder, editor and publisher of The Murfreesboro Pulse, MTSU professor Jacqueline Springfield, teaching West African Dance, Sheana Firth, owner and operator of local graphic design company Break Away Graphics; Diana Rice of Nashville’s Documentary Channel; and MTSU apparel design professor Lauren Rudd, leading a workshop on fashion illustration. John Iaccheri, founder of the locally-started HobNob websites, and costume technician John Darmour—whose work has been featured in operas, plays, musicals, television and film—will lead a panel discussion.
Shapiro, participating in Express Yourself for the second time, points to the intrinsic link between people and art as the driving force behind the conference.
“You can’t find a human community, anywhere, at any time, that has not produced some form of art,” Shapiro says. “For whatever reason, history suggests that the human animal needs art. The drive to make art is rooted in our very being. To ignore that drive, or to devalue it, is to ignore and devalue one of the essential components of human identity. And that, in a nutshell, is what arts education, and EYAC, is all about.”