Tuesday, October 15, 2024
About the Wisconsin Arts Celebration Project (WACP)
Last year, the Wisconsin Arts Celebration Project began as a collaborative project between the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the Wisconsin Arts Board created to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Wisconsin Arts Board. The project offers FREE music, lesson plans, and materials created by Wisconsin artists and educators to Wisconsin schools, communities, and libraries. This project and the intentional connections between poetry, spoken word, music, dance, theater, visual art, and media art demonstrate this crucial throughline: Creativity is a vital human capacity that we must continue to nurture in our students and each other.
Over the course of the school year, schools from every corner of Wisconsin participated in the project. Student visual art creations can be found on the DPI website. These examples include works from elementary school children to high school students hailing from Janesville all the way to Baldwin Woodville. Music performances of “Like The Wind” included bands, choirs and orchestras from South Milwaukee to the Upper St. Croix Valley. In fact, “Like The Wind” will be performed by the 2024 Wisconsin Middle School Honors Band at the end of October.
The 2024 Wisconsin Arts Celebration Project (WACP) will center on the theme of “Curiosity”
"If teachers can keep the flame of curiosity burning in children, then pretty much everything else will follow from that. Curiosity is the engine of achievement."
–Sir Ken Robinson
In addition to the commissioned poem, music, and digital motion graphic, the project has expanded to include a commissioned painting, Korean paper art, theatre production, and recorded professional dance. All of this including K-12 lessons plans for every arts discipline written by six of Wisconsin’s veteran arts educators. The full list of the participating artists and educators can be found here.
This year’s project also features video interviews with all of the participating teachers and professional artists involved in the project. The videos reveal the teachers pedagogical approach as well as the creators process and intent. The project also includes video of the UW-Stevens Point Concert Choir, Symphony Orchestra, and Wind Ensemble performing the commissioned music by composer Andy Boysen Jr. These recordings will serve as a useful tool and resource for schools interested in programming the work for their own ensembles.
This year’s poem was created by Native American Writer, Photographer, Scholar and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser. Her poem “Cabinet of Curiosity” conveys her fascination with a cabinet which holds precious items that invite her to wonder and to be curious. As she says, “It is just this need to look closely. To see and then to see deeper. I am always saying there is no surface; surface is an illusion.”
This year's project will launch on this website on October 18, 2024 on the DPI Website with the music, lesson plans, and other resources available for one year at no cost.
Important Links:
WACP Landing Page
WACP Artist/Teacher Interviews