By Grant Terwilliger
Cardinal Creatives Arts Festival brought together artists of all different mediums and backgrounds in the campus community.
The festival which took place on April 19 was run by students in four different creative sections on campus music, visual arts, theater and creative writing.
Mirren Guzzio and Luke Gerhardt were responsible for putting together the festival and assigning students to be in charge of different sections of the event. Guzzio helped organize deadlines for different portions and helped figure out tasks that needed to be completed in order for the festival to go smoothly.
“My job was to make sure that we had people that had their own vision in each of those categories, and then I was supposed to kind of help them make it cohesive and also make it come to life,” Guzzio said.
Gerhardt was in charge of the music section of the festival. Reg Sutphen and Lydia Felix were in charge of the theater section with members of the College Theater Association. Kylie Ayala and Grace Estus were in charge of the creative writing portion of the festival in collaboration with SUNY Plattsburghs, North Star Magazine. SA Coordinator for the Arts Cameron Greaves worked on the visual art portion and did the promotional work for the festival.
There were also volunteers tabling and helping out at the event. Ngozi Permaul was a volunteer this year and last year and found that the time of year when the event is held affects the amount of students at the festival.
“Last year, it wasn’t placed during Easter time. So we had a lot more people, because they didn’t go home for break. This year people went home for break, so we had a bit less attendance. It was still a good turnout,” Permaul said.
Volunteers and attendees at the event had a chance to sign up for stage performance slots in the Warren Ballrooms in the Angell College Center. Permaul decided to take the opportunity to have fun while performing music with others.
“I performed my set at 1 p.m. and then after that I did more tabling, raffles and giving out flyers. I then performed again with Minor Adjustments, the acapella group on campus,” Permaul said.
The Cardinal Creatives Art Festival was held for the first time in the spring of 2024. It started off with friendship and inspiration from a Cardinal Freshman Seminar called “Building thriving communities.”
“So I’m in my junior year, and in the spring semester of my freshman year Luke and I took the class that inspired us to create the festival,” Guzzio said. “We wanted an opportunity for students to showcase the artwork that they were creating out of class because a lot of the time people just get to show in school what they’re doing for assignments.”
Guzzio said that she is looking forward to putting on the festival again next year and potentially even expanding the event into an arts club where students can meet people of different artistic backgrounds and influences across campus.
“We’re hoping to make it a bigger, more collaborative thing that students can participate in more throughout the school year instead of just planning that one event. I think we want to incorporate a lot of cross collaboration,” Guzzio said.
Cross collaboration allows departments and clubs on campus to better work together and build a sense of community among students. The second annual Cardinal Creative Arts festival was an opportunity to create and express oneself while bringing together different departments and a range of creative passions.
“I’m very proud of how it went this year and the turnout that we had and I think having events like this that are really community oriented are more important than ever. So I’m very grateful that we had 100 students come this year, and support their peers,” Guzzio said.
