Lafayette will be having its first Fine Arts Festival on April 22 and 23.  Displaying an array of art, drama and music, there will be over 200 Lafayette students participating, as well as students from Pond Elementary, Wildwood Middle School and Rockwood Valley Middle School. The Festival will be open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on April 22 and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 23. There will be no cost to enter. There will be various activities and performances ranging from art displays, a Guitar Festival, kids’ crafts, local artist demos, Solo and Ensemble Acts and an improv show.

The Guitar Festival, which will be on April 22 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., will feature the Guitar Ensemble, Monday Jam, Wednesday Jam, Tuesday Night Rock Band and the AcLab Country Band. 

“The Fine Arts Festival is essentially a celebration, a showcase of all the different things that the Art Department does. The Guitar Festival has existed in the past, but now we’re putting it together with the arts, with the improv team, with band orchestra and choir doing soul ensembles. So it’s a chance for the whole department to come together and show what we do,” Guitar teacher Traci Bolton said. 

 Junior Mackenna Glazer cadets for Meghan O’Donnell during her 6th Hour Photography 1 class and has been helping prepare for the festival. Glazer is in an ensemble with a group of five other girls and is also doing a solo. Since Glazer is involved in multiple art programs, she has been able to see all the effort being put into the preparation of the Fine Arts Festival.

“Our teachers are stressed and I think they’re putting in so much work, so I think it’s gonna be really amazing,” Glazer said.

Art teacher Lauren Sakowski is one of the Fine Arts teachers who is organizing the Fine Arts Festival.

“We’ve been floating this idea around every year for some time now, but everybody gets so busy and our teachers are always so busy with the District Art Show in April and there’s a lot going on,” she said. “When the district decided to cancel the District Art Show, we thought last year we had such success with our first building show during the pandemic, and we just thought, ‘oh we’ll just do our own thing again.’”

So, the Fine Arts teachers talked to come up with ideas and set the date. Along with Lafayette students being featured, all schools that feed into Lafayette are invited to come. There will be art pieces displayed from Rockwood Valley Middle School, Wildwood Middle School and Pond Elementary School. 

“Come on out, support the arts. Come to the Guitar Festival. Come back on Saturday, bring your brothers and sisters, bring your family. We’re going to have a kid’s corner, we’re going to have different performances happening during the day and there’s going to be beautiful artwork there. We’ve got local artists coming in,” Sakowski said. “It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be a great event.”