Although Brookdale Community College in Lincroft has been an integral part of Monmouth County for a number of decades, it is still a work in progress. Endeavoring to remain on the cutting edge of creative arts education, faculty members have joined together to promote an arts festival that they hope will become an annual weeklong event similar to the Incite Arts Festival held at Boston University in Massachusetts.
The InciteArts Festival showcases the dynamic artists, performers and poets at that school.
Brookdale’s initiative, called Brookdale Arts Alive!, also will highlight student-generated original work and performed work in a year-end mini festival held over two days on the Route 520 campus.
“The two-day string of events is meant to be the first annual one. Next year, in April 2009, the committee, made up of faculty from across the college, will coordinate the event for a full week,” said assistant professor Laura McCullough, who originated the idea and co-chairs the committee with her colleague in the English Department, Jack Ryan.
She explained that the event is meant to promote the key role that the arts play in an undergraduate education and in the culture of academics at the college.
The mini festival on May 6 and 7 will include a gallery reception for the student visual arts show, the premiere of the college’s award-wining literary magazine, Collage; student readings of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction fromthe new creative writing program; and a spoken-word event. In addition, musical theater students will showcase their performances, theater students will stage excerpts from the season’s showings, and original student television productions will be aired on a bigscreen TV.
If that’s not ambitious enough, Ryan said that while the festival is in swing, students from the TV production classes will film the events and interview students and faculty for later airing on Brookdale TV, and also for a live feed across campus on the college’s BluesNet.
McCullough explained that the college instituted a new creative writing major in the fall of ’07.
“We have one of the best two-year college creative writing programs in the country offering a great selection of courses: mixed genre, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction (the fastestgrowing area in publishing right now), screenwriting and graphic novel.We’re very cutting edge, and we also have actively publishing writers on the faculty,” McCullough said. She noted that she has a second collection of poetry, published by XOXOX Press, coming out this summer called “What Men Want.” She has also been published in literary magazines such as Nimrod, Prairie Schooner and The American Poetry Review. Another of her colleagues, Jeffrey Ford, just published his eighth novel.
“We have a number of MFA [Master of Fine Arts] and MAs [Master of Arts] in creative writing on the faculty, a top-notch Visiting Writers Series, and are working with BFA [Bachelor of Fine Arts] programs in creative writing,” she said.
On April 29, as part of The Capstone Reading program held each semester, students in the creative writing program as well as faculty members read poetry, fiction, essays and screenplays that had been generated this semester.
“This is all part of the overarching Brookdale Arts Alive!We will be showcasing student creative work in all the arts at the mini festival. It will include singers, dancers, theater, photography, painting, the literary magazine, poetry, prose, essays, guitar, etc. Architecture and fashion design are being brought into the mix as well,” McCullough said.
As wonderful as Capstone events are, Brookdale Arts Alive! isn’t just about showcasing student creativity, she said. “This program is a yearlong initiative to cross-pollinate between artistic disciplines as well as to open up the notion of creativity.”
For example, she said, the program will show how artistic endeavors on campus are connected to curriculum. She explained that studies show that the more involvement a student has on campus outside of the classroom, the lower the attrition rates are and the higher the graduation rates.
“How then can we involve students in more activities on campus outside of their class work? One way is connectivity. Can we get screenwriting students working with students in TV production, photography students with theater students, art students with fashion?”
She added that the possibilities are broad and only limited by imagination and time, which isn’t just a problem for students or faculty; time is a factor for the audience for these events, so this initiative also hopes to do double duty with audiences.
“For example, not many on campus knew we had a fabulous annual show for student architects,” she said. “We want to increase awareness of this, while also connecting events such as this with other student creative events and widen the audience for all of them at the same time?
“Core faculty from the visual arts, literature, music, theater, communication, as well as those more technologydriven disciplines have come together in this seedling first year to re-envision what it means to be a creative student on campus.We’re redefining what it means to be a creativity coach, mentor, and faculty person here as well,” she said.
So McCullough and others are coming up with creative ways to increase awareness while also connecting events in order to widen the audience for all of them at the same time.
For information, e-mail lmccullough@ brookdalecc.edu or jryan@brookdalecc. edu.
The event schedule is a follows:
May 6, at 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Center for Visual Arts:
• Student literarymagazine Collage premiere
• Annual BCC Student Art Exhibition Reception (art show open May 5- May 15 in the CVAGallery)
• Creative writing student readings from Collage and Creative Writing Club.
• Original student TV production premiere.
• Theater and music department performances.
Refreshments will be served.
May 6 at 6 p.m. in the PerformingArts Center Experimental Theater:
• Acting students scene recital
May 6, at 7 p.m. in the Warner Student Life Center, Navesink 1:
The 13th Annual Evening of International Poetry Performances hosted by psychology professor Elaine Henry Olaoye.
The 13th annual Evening of International Poetry Performances is a Poetry and Psychology Festival. This year the Caribbean will be a prism through which students, faculty andmembers of the New York and New Jersey communities present common cultural themes in original language from around the world. Featured works will include those of Antiguan-born Jamaica Kincaid and the Nobel prize winner from St. Lucia, Derek Walcott.
Light refreshments served.
May 7 in the Warner Student Life Center:
• The Loser Poetry Slam Spoken-word program.