Design and arts for everyone

As the creative heart of ASU, the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is a connected creative community with more than 9,000 artists, designers, scholars. Herberger Institute Day is our community design and arts festival where we explore all the creative disciplines at the Institute at Herberger together. This year, we celebrated design and arts for everyone – welcoming the entire ASU community as well as some local high schools.

Nearly 200 high school students joined the Herberger Institute community for the festival.

The annual day of workshops and performances by students and faculty in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts was open to the entire ASU community this year, and three local high schools sent students to get a glimpse of what arts in college can be like.

All the high school students attended the block party, had lunch and toured the campus. Students from ASU Prep and Chief Hill Learning Academy in Chandler had workshops and visited the many drop-in activities.

About 120 students from Chandler High School got to choose an interest track — music, dance, theater or art — and attended several workshops based on those interests. They sat in on an ASU Wind Ensemble rehearsal, attended a session on how to navigate the music business, learned about floral arranging, saw behind the scenes of the Nelson Fine Arts Center, experienced Brazilian Samba Drumming and visited the ASU Art Museum.

There were several dozen drop-in activities and workshops around the Tempe campus, including: “A Beginner’s Guide to the Piano,” “Build ASU … in Minecraft,” “Discovering Argentine Tango,” “Indian Folk Dance in Bollywood Movies,” “Networking for Creative Professionals” and “Singing Songs of Solidarity and Protest.”

The decision to include high school students in Herberger Institute Day started with a collaboration between Melita Belgrave, associate dean for culture and access at the Herberger Institute, and Christina Ngo, executive director for social embeddedness at ASU. They wanted to invite students to experience the arts at ASU and worked with the city of Chandler and the Chandler Unified School District to use grant money to fund the transportation.

“They decided to bring freshmen through seniors,” said Belgrave, who also is an associate professor of music therapy in the Herberger Institute.

“The partnership blossomed from there, and we were excited to introduce high school students to the Herberger Institute, and all of the design and arts majors, minors and experiences that they can explore at ASU.”

Pivonka, who was previously a middle school teacher, organized the high schoolers’ visit to remove as much work from the teachers as possible.

“I know how hard it is for teachers to do things outside of the normal school day because there’s no time. I’m happy to offer that extra support,” she said.