Arts and culture in the City of Winter Park takes center stage on the first weekend of February, during the second annual four-day “Winter Park Arts Weekend,” dubbed “A Tapestry of Experiences.”
Anda Ariail, the city’s Senior Advisor for Arts and Culture, said the idea behind the event is not just to showcase the 24 members of the Winter Park Arts and Culture Alliance, but to make the arts more accessible to the public with mostly free programming.
Additionally, it aims to call attention to museums, galleries, and other arts centers across the area.
People can find performances, panels, and their very own chances to create, including helping to make an actual community tapestry, said Ariail, noting that the “tapestry of experiences” theme is both literal and figurative.
“We have such a wide variety of alliance members. We have a dance troupe, we have a couple of art museums, we have a history museum, we have the library,” said Ariail. “All of them are so different, and so we thought the tapestry was a really nice way to illustrate the weaving of all our different organizations together to create the culture you see in Winter Park.”
The event gets underway on February 5th with a guided interactive panel called Weaving Art and Science for Healthy Young Minds. “It's really talking about how important arts are in positive mental health for youth…about how song, dance and arts contribute to positive mental health,” explained Ariail. “The community is invited. Parents are invited. Students are invited.”
An evening of outdoor entertainment from Broadway star Jasmine Forsberg follows on Friday, in Winter Park’s Central Park stage and lawn area. “She’s from SIX: The Musical,” said Ariail. “She is also homegrown! She went to a local high school here. She performed at a couple of the local theaters here in Central Florida, including the Winter Park Playhouse.”
On Saturday, the event takes over the whole of the Central Park area for a special “Art in the Park” experience.
“There will be live performances on the stage and interactive art activities going on throughout the park. All of our alliance members will be there, and they will be showcasing what they're best at,” said Ariail. The art activities include the community tapestry, a crash course on good self-portraits, and a design session as part of the ongoing competition for the next Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival promotional poster.
The final day is a bit different, Ariail said. “Sunday, we encourage everyone to go out and enjoy one of our cultural museums, one of our gardens, watch one of the performances that are located throughout the city. Sunday, many of the museums will be free for the weekend, as well as special exhibits and performances will be going on.”
Ariail pointed out that arts and culture are part of Winter Park’s historical identity. “It's in the vision statement of the city – we started off as the city of arts and culture. So this is really a weekend, not only to celebrate all the arts, but also to bring the arts out into the community, to hopefully engage the community that they will then go out and participate more in all of these arts organizations.”
