North Campus Festival Promotes The Arts

The Festival of the Arts, in its eighth year at the North Campus, will take place from March 23-30.

Featured at the Festival will be a wide-range of activities including theatre performances, music, film, painting, sculpture, dance, photography, poetry, and a fashion parade with students wearing recycled items.

In addition, there will be renowned visiting dancers from the Miami City Ballet, an internationally renowned photographer and a Haitian artist with an April exhibit in Italy.

“I hope students will take the opportunity to attend the events, enjoy the performances and appreciate the talents of other students,” said Festival of the Arts, co-chair Barbara Alfonso.  “The opening ceremony is going to be a lot of fun this year. The visiting artists [will] give students [the] opportunity to interact with artists who have a career in the arts and a national or international reputation.”

The mission of the Festival of the Arts is to promote awareness of the arts by displaying the talents of the students, faculty, staff and members of the community through a week-long series of events, exhibitions and presentations.

“The festival is a once a year opportunity to learn about the programs in arts and philosophy and the School of Entertainment and Design Technology and the new state-of-the-art facilities that come online and are available for use by students,” Alfonso said. “But the best part of all is watching the student performances in the events throughout the festival and seeing and hearing the submissions for the poster and original music competitions.”

Like every year, the Festival will be hosting a poster competition and a music competition allowing students to submit their work promoting awareness and encouraging attendance at  the Festival.

The music competition allows musicians to submit their work as part of the Festival of the Arts. The winner will perform during the Festival of the Arts Gala.

Octavio Roca, co-chair of the festival, said the festival’s focus is giving exposure to young talent.

“It is our chance to share the student’s talent with the college and the community,” Roca said.