Area high school students participate in last year's Express Yourself Arts Conference
Bob Lanier, Bell Jeweler’s in-house jewelry designer, has loved to draw since he was a small child, and he has been able to turn the swoops and curly lines of his pencil drawings into a career of designing and making fine jewelry. But many creative kids don’t know how to turn their talents into a job. The mission of the sixth annual Express Yourself Arts Conference (EYAC) on Nov. 5 at World Outreach in Murfreesboro is to do exactly that—give high school students the opportunity to see how successful business people, like Lanier, have turned their talents into a life-long career.
On Nov. 8, high-school students from all over the county will have the opportunity to work and talk with creative professionals about turning their passions into a career. EYAC, a collaboration of the Business Education Partnership Foundation (BEP), Read To Succeed (RTS) and Arts in Rutherford (AIR) made possible by grants received from Middle Tennessee Electric Customers Care, Inc. and The Adams Family Foundation, is all about getting teenagers to understand that their artistic 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 sculpture, writing to dance, music to theater.
Artwork by conference participant Brian Williams
Workshops will be broken down into five tracks: Literary Arts, Performing Arts, Performing Arts—Music, Visual Arts and The Dabbler for those wishing to explore a number of different areas. Each workshop leader has years of experience in their chosen field, and they are excited to share their wisdom with local students through hands-on activities. There will be three workshops in each track.
Besides the workshops, there will be a panel discussion on the “Business of Art” with members of the business community. Included on the panel will be graphic designer Sheana Firth, furnishing design specialist Marianne Miller, Screen Art owner Mike Bickford, Latin Grammy-nominated sound engineer J.C. Monterrosa and jewelry designer Bob Lanier. This discussion will be followed by a conversation with Pat Blankenship, who is a lawyer and the founder of Children’s Academy Theatre of Tennessee (CATT), a division of Youth Empowerment through Arts and Humanities (YEAH), about arts advocacy. She will talk about what students can do now to ensure the future of the arts in the county and beyond.
As a special treat, participating students will hear through Skype from members of the design team at Nissan Design America, which creates the interior and exterior look of American-made Nissans. This group has also designed everything from kindergarten furniture to the look and feel of the ICON, a personal light aircraft.
“This conference has had a real impact on participant’s lives,” said Conference Coordinator and BEP Executive Director Lee Rennick. “We have learned from evaluations that participating students have been inspired to complete high school and make plans for post-secondary education because the artists with which the students interacted at EYAC let it be known how important advanced education was to their success.”
For more information about EYAC visit rutherfordbep.org or readtosucceed.org. The BEP Facebook page, facebook.com/BEPFoundation, has photos from previous years and visual artwork created by this year’s students.
