Fine Arts Ed Camp Experience

What a day!

Thank you to the Fine Arts enthusiasts who organized this amazing day at Central Memorial. The FIRST EVER Fine Arts Ed Camp!!

The PD Day was kicked off with a blessing from jingle dress dancer Stephanie. She encouraged connecting with Indigenous fine arts in our province, most importantly by getting to the land: get out to Blackfoot Crossing Museum, go to Okotoks, the Rock, the Nosehill Site. Learn about the history Amanda Foot at the Glenbow Museum and Moonstone Creation in Inglewood are great resources. I have further contacted Stephanie, and when I get more contact info for Indigenous performers and artists, I will share :)

Keynote speaker Bruce Barton, discussed with us "Striking an Effective Balance in Interdisciplinary Arts Education". From the School of Creative and Performing Arts at UofC, Bruce passionately talked about the evolution of fine arts integration to defining what is truly interdisciplinary work in our day and age. Their fine arts programs interweave a variety of disciplines together to create amazing performances and compositions in a 2-year span. What stuck with me was the idea that if we do not promote fine arts in the K-12 public school world, how will students have equal opportunity to engage in post-secondary programs like these? The SCPA (School of Creative and Performing Arts) will be presenting a performance in February 2018. More info to come...

My sessions were awesome...

I attended the 3D Modeling & Printing workshop. If your school currently has a 3D printer collecting dust and/or still in packaging because no one knows how to use it, Mr. Scott at Central Memorial gave a us a quick and easy run-through of the program and effective challenges for students. Handy tip: Autodesk Inventor is a much simpler program to use than Sketch Up for connecting with the printer. If you would like resources, I can share the Google Folder with you or connect you with Mr. Scott.

They served us lunch! And we had high school students performing for us all lunch hour! I was stunned at the amount of food and talent squeezed in!! Central Memorial had several pieces arranged, including the choir singing, the string band performing, 2 dance classes groovin' and the musical theatre group up there as well.

In the afternoon I attended Singing Techniques for Musicians: Singers and Instrumentalists aka The Science of Singing. As a choral singer for 10 years in my youth, I was taken back to weekly vocal warm-us with the Calgary Girls Choir. I had forgotten how important it was to warm-up the voice for singing. Our presenter Amanda Massey encouraged more vocal warm-up activities to encourage students to take more risks. I left the session with a mitt full of activities and resources. We are looking forward to seeing Amanda in future ATA conferences as well!

Lastly, I attended the Decidedly Jazz Danceworks session. Though we were a small group and I was clearly not a dance teacher, I was warmly welcomed and was thrown into a sweaty jazz dance routine. Visions of a 9-year old version of me flashed before my eyes, remembering my new dance shoes that stuck to the floor and the self-consciousness of basically wearing a swimsuit out of water, in front of people and dancing in it. Those were the days. Nonetheless, I went home with a full jazz dance routine, and tips for warm up and learning about the history. These lessons I can use in my Music or Gym class, and the conversations we had about the content, lead me to more ideas about how to infuse jazz music into my program.

Overall, I would highly recommend attending next year's second annual Fine Arts Ed Camp. See you there...