Both creative arts and the world’s fragile eco-system are important to Madisen Orpel and her classmates at St. Martin School.
The 10-year-old on Wednesday was one of hundreds of students from across the city who took part in the Community Arts and Heritage Education Project’s Arts Fiesta at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium.
The youngster and her friends spent the past several weeks putting together their performance, How to Stop the Folly of Man, showcasing this year’s Water Wisdom theme.
It was a lot of fun, she said.
“We worked really hard on this and I just found it really fun to dance to something a little different,” Madisen said, admitting she was a little nervous performing in front of so many people.
“It was about us, the green plants, coming out of seeds. Then the blue people comes in, which is water, watering us and we grow. Then the humans come in.”
The idea behind the performance was to show how important water conservation is and the dangers not being smart about the world’s most important natural resource.
The message is clear.
“If we don’t stop, the water can get very polluted and most likely disappear,” Madisen said.
The afternoon event was organized by CAHEP’s Alana Forslund, the group’s executive director. Now in its 13th year, the Arts Fiesta has continued to grow and inspire. The goal of the program is to ensure students in grades 4 to 6 are able to work alongside a professional artist in their classroom.
“It’s dance, it’s drama, it’s film, it’s music, it’s visual art. It’s a real smorgasbord of arts and it’s wonderful to see the ideas the students have come up with the artists,” Forslund said.
The theme was chosen by an online public vote.
“It’s really exciting because we’re seeing a lot of ways that students are starting to honour the water and value the water and think about how it’s important to our future as well,” Forslund said.
Elliott Doxtater-Wynn was one of the artists who went into the classroom, part of the Artists in the 5th program.
He helped out at Ecole Franco Superieur and said students taking part in the Arts Fiesta are at a malleable age.
“Some of them are feeling nervous about being an artist and some of them are feeling strong about being an artist,” Doxtater-Wynn said.
“If you can encourage that in the classroom with that setting, especially with that age group, they’re able to support each other and get stronger.”
Students from St. Bernard, Holy Cross, Ecole Gron Morgan, Algonquin Avenue, St. Ann, St. Jude Agnew H. Johnston, St. James, McKellar Park and Nor’Wester View schools also took part.
