Kent has a great legacy of artistic expression across a wide range of mediums and there’s been series of individual arts events and gallery exhibitions celebrating Kent art over the years but there hasn’t been a “Friends of Public Art” group campaigning in Kent for more a more organized commitment to public art, until now.
Picking up on the spirit of collaboration which proved so successful in downtown Kent, the City, Kent State, Main Street Kent, the Chamber of Commerce and a growing list of local artists and their arts minded friends have been meeting for months to talk up the Kent art scene and develop some ideas to highlight Kent’s art rich creative DNA.
The early meetings were mostly meet, greet, and cheerlead for the arts — sharing ideas, aspirations and opportunities. After a couple of months, the idea of a “Creativity Festival” in Kent started to take shape as a way to provide a canvass to display the diverse range of artistic expression that exists here in Kent.
Interest in an inaugural Creativity Festival is gaining some traction — enough so that a working group of local artists and event organizers have started to try to piece together the details for what Kent’s first Creativity Festival would look like.
They’re off to a great start but they want to hear more from the general public about what art inspires them, how they could use the arts to engage the community and inspire others, and how can the Creativity Festival be a launching pad for those ambitious goals.
To that end, the group has worked with a student at KSU to set up an online survey that tries to ask for input on these broad arts questions. The responses will be used as a basis to guide the elements of the Creativity Festival later this year.
I offered to do my part to spread the word. Here’s the link to the arts survey. It’s quite short, I promise.