Arts Festival offers inspiration, encouragement, community

From Mr. Ciaravino:

Last weekend, twenty-one Keystone upper school students, and the entire Fine Arts faculty, gathered with 3,700 students and teachers from around the region at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin to participate in the 52nd annual ISAS Arts Festival.

According to the ISAS website, “participation in the Festival is intended to foster high standards and stimulate creativity in the performing and fine arts programs of the schools and in the individual endeavors of students and teachers.”

Our students attended workshops, plays, film screenings, rock shows and jazz concerts to name a few. They also performed and showed their visual art with courage and conviction.

Being an artist, especially a young artist, can feel very lonely at times. This unique festival allows students to see, in a very tangible way, that they are not alone or different, but rather that their voice matters, and that they belong to a tribe of like-minded, creative, and passionate people. Teachers are given a break from their daily routine and offered the breathing room to collaborate with others to ask the “What if” questions.

In this chaotic world, nothing offers peace and clarity quite like the arts.