Preparations have begun for the Creative Arts Expo on May 22nd! With the desire for more attendance, two teachers, Mr. Sylvia and Mrs. Murphy, have spearheaded a new version of the Expo, presenting a night of expanded interests to help bring in the entire town of Clinton as an audience.
There are many ideas and new plans involved this year, with trying to make the program something bigger than it was.
The Creative Arts Expo is a school-wide showing of “all the different sorts of creative endeavors from students, from visual arts and music and performing arts, culinary, sometimes they’re showings from engineering as well, and a few other teachers that want to represent their students’ creative works,” as shared by art teacher, Justin Sylvia.
The teachers involved in it are, of course, Mr. Sylvia and Mrs. Murphy, but other teachers such as Mr. Neri, the engineering teacher, and Mr. Smith and Orduz, the retired music teacher now auditorium assistant and band director.
Mr. Sylvia is responsible for “presenting the visual art’s department’s projects,” and Mrs. Murphy is responsible for the “most advanced culinary art students preparing h d’oeuvres to serve,” and “the FCCLA club’s activity with small children.”
Sylvia has talked about how they both have “undertaken some extra responsibilities of trying to make the showing even grander and get more turnout from the school community and also the town community.” In order to do this, they have reac
hed out to the Chamber of Commerce, the Clinton Town Library, and Clinton Arts Society, to help have more eyes on the event as well. Mrs. Murphy also stated that she was, “responsible for getting some of the senior citizens, guitar playing folks, to come and play for a little while.”
Some ways that Mr. Sylvia and Mrs. Murphy have advertised for the Expo was to create many posters that have been put up around the school, and also aim to post advertisements online, and spread the word around town.
New events that other teachers have helped with setting up will be at the expo as well. Mr. Luther shared that there will be a “little section, about 20, 30 minutes where I’m gonna bring a bunch of reptiles, be in the gym, and then show some stuff to the kids.” Including the other normal annual activities, there will also be a performance from a rock band as well.
Luther also vouched that, “we felt to draw more people in because if there’s more diverse things, then maybe people would bring their kids to just see some reptiles, [like the new activities] but then also get to see all the awesome things, accomplishments, that the students have done here at school.” Overall, the whole staff has planned for this event to be bigger and better than before.
Unfortunately, one of the problems, as well as the goal for the expo is the turn-out. Sylvia shared, “I think [the lack of attendance] really stemmed down to lack of advertising. It wasn’t really advertised outside of the school, or posted much on social media and even within the Pawprints…it wasn’t a good representation of our community.” For these reasons, he decided to in turn take more control of the Expo. Senior Nikky Zhou also voiced that, “I feel like we need more community to come here because it’s such a great event and people need to see it.”
Both Murphy and Sylvia share similar hopes for the day, and future art expos. They both “hope for there to be a big turnout from Morgan students as well as parents and family members and even just members of the community that want to come by and see what’s happening,” Sylvia specifically “hopes to have every student that wants to have something represented, to have that opportunity.”
The entire school’s arts, tech, and culinary department hopes to see everyone at the school!
