Jacqueline Springfield and Terry Summers teach West African Dance
Eagleville High School student Tiffany Dunigan plays guitar in a Rock Band workshop
The four people sitting on the stage at Patterson Park Community Center have a few things in common. They’re all there for a panel discussion at the fifth annual Express Yourself Arts Conference, an event that brings local high-school kids together who want to pursue a career in the arts. Panelists are all professionals. They all spend their days in a creative work environment. They all live and work (sometimes) in Middle Tennessee. But what really ties these four—John Iaccheri, founder and operator of the Hobnob websites; J. Brooks Christol, a partner at Murfreesboro advertising firm Barker & Christol; Lauren Shouse, Artistic Associate at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre; and John Darmour, a costume technician whose works has been featured in films like Dark Knight and Contagion, to name a few—is that they’ve all turned a passion into a career. And sometimes they’ve had to think outside the box to turn that creative passion into a bona fide living.
Patterson Park was filled with people who’ve done just that on Wednesday, Oct. 26.
The Express Yourself Arts Conference—a collaboration of the Business Education Partnership, Read To Succeed, Destination Rutherford, Middle Tennessee Electric Customers Care and the Friends of Linebaugh Library—is all about getting teenagers to focus on the arts and proving to these students that their talents don’t have to be accessories to their futures. The conference aims to encourage these students to explore, practice and hone their skills, from painting to graphic design, writing to music criticism, music to theater.
“The people we had here talking about making films came just off a film set,” said Lee Rennick, executive director of the Business Education Partnership and conference chair. “These students are getting to learn from the people who are actually doing it.”
In one room, students choreographed dances in a Glee workshop led by Rennick. Next door, MTSU Professor and noted writer and poet Aaron Shapiro showed a group of aspiring writers how to use the website QuickMuse.com, where well-known poets respond to a prompt that viewers can then watch in real-time (the students were able to witness the struggle behind a particular phrase, the ease with which the next flows, and discuss the purpose behind each and every word).
Down the hall, the Pulse’s own publisher and editor Bracken Mayo led a workshop on music and art journalism, playing Sigur Ros for students before asking them to succinctly describe the notoriously inexplicable band. Later in the day, students donned “lapas,” traditional African wrap skirts, and learned West African dance moves courtesy of professional dancers Jacqueline Springfield and Terry Summers.
Kelsey Wells plays the fiddle as accompaniment to mom Kory's poetry in a workshop entitled "What's That Music Doing in my Poem?"
Local poet Kory Wells read some of her work while daughter Kelsey played along with her fiddle and banjo in a workshop rightfully entitled “What’s that Music Doing in My Poem?” The mother-and-daughter duo has performed at the Southern Festival of Books and music festivals all over the state. At Patterson, Kory asked students to think about what makes them mad. What makes them angry. “That,” she told them, “is what makes good art.”
And Kory, who works as a software product director when she’s not writing poetry and performing with her daughter, knows a thing or two about holding onto your passions.
“It’s not easy to make a living as a poet,” she said. “You have to find that niche that speaks to you. But no matter what, you have to always feed that artist inside of you.”
Workshop leaders also included Linebaugh Library’s Roy Lee, who taught improv; Alex Blackwelder, a wedding and special event photographer who turned her classroom into a “camera obscura,” blocking out all light save one small space of window that then reflected the outside of the room; Jimmy Mansfield, who turned a group of students into a rock band in just over an hour; Sheana Firth, owner and operator of local graphic design company Break Away Graphics, whose students created mood boards for their favorite logos; Diana Rice of Nashville’s Documentary Channel, who arrived at the conference fresh off a film set; and MTSU Apparel Design Professor Lauren Rudd, leading a workshop on fashion illustration.
It wasn’t your average school day. That much is for sure.
During the panel, Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s Lauren Shouse told students that, above all else, you have to know in your soul that you can’t do anything else if your heart is in the arts.
“Just persevere and create,” she said.
