St. Charles Parish Public Schools held an art awareness day on March 20, inviting the entire community to come out for a day of performance and visual art.
The event took place at the Professional Learning Center in Luling and included about 30 performances and a gallery of artwork from students in schools throughout the parish.
This is only the second year that the event has taken place and Rick Treuting, Administrator of Student Services and the Arts for the school district, said that the turnout was just as good as last year.
“We represented three forms of the arts: musical, visual and theatrical arts,” Treuting said. “I saw zillions of smiles and heard a lot of compliments.”
This year, the planning team for the event tried to get visitors to see more than just what they initially came for, Treuting said.
“We created passports with a schedule of all the performances throughout the day,” he said. “If they went into three different venues, or stages, and get their passport stamped they were eligible for a drawing.
“We had more than 200 tickets reflecting the fact that that’s 200 times three, so we got a lot more than just that immediate point of interest.”
This year, Treuting said that he had wanted performers and teachers to only work at the event if they truely wanted to be there, without pressure or imposition.
“The people who were there wanted to be there and we think that’s just fine,” he said. “When you’re putting your time into something with no compensation and no pressure, it points out your love and I think that’s what we saw – that these people love the arts.”
Treuting is trying to send a message about appreciating the arts to the community with the event.
But he says that he doesn’t expect that message to get across in one weekend.
“It’s not something that’s done on one Saturday and it’s over, but we want to continue to make people aware of why the arts are valuable,” he said.
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