Success Stories

Success in Incorporating Activities for Kids: The Stringbean Mountain Music Festival in Jackson County

The Stringbean Memorial Music Park’s Mountain Music Festival in Jackson County, a festival honoring county native David “Stringbean” Akemon, and dedicated to preserving mountain music and heritage, first took on an arts and crafts component in 1997. The first year they used one army tent to accommodate the ten participating crafters and only a few school children took part in the event. The folklife component has expanded and improved every year since 1998, with the achievement of their first Kentucky Arts Council Folklife Grant. Last September they held their most impressive festival by far, due in large part to collaborating with several schools to organize for children and program for core curriculum, and utilizing the help of high school students in executing the festival.

Appalachian Heritage Highways formed to help several small communities network and share ideas from their own experiences. These arts administrators, festival organizers, artists, craftspeople, interested community members, along with Judy Sizemore and Gabrielle Beasley, met periodically to discuss ideas and possible issues. From these meetings came the idea to recruit students from home economics classes at the high schools to be docents. These students wore special staff t-shirts and did wonders for the festival by creating a much more organized way for younger children to experience the festival. The 40 or 50 docents each led a group of students along a circuit of numbered booths, creating a more ordered and structured atmosphere. Judy Sizemore wrote lesson plans for school curriculum to correspond with the programming of the festival. Teachers introduce ideas before the festival and follow up after the festival with activities for reflection about what they’ve learned and experienced. The festival features new elements each year for the students to add to what they’ve learned in previous years, for example this year they will include Chinese music and dancing to add to their knowledge of Native American folk music and folk dancing. The festival has made connections with schools in Berea and Owsley, Clay, Jackson, and Rockcastle Counties.

Cathy Howell from the extension office and Ken Williams, the Music Park coordinator, got many ideas from the Community Scholars curriculum. They acquired helpful knowledge about interviewing artists, utilizing a narrative stage in the program, and laying out an exhibit. They collected other practical information, for example that kids tend not to pay attention at a demonstration when crafts are presented as items for sale. Through the Community Scholars curriculum, they developed a scavenger hunt that would require kids to interact with crafters to gain information. In addition to the Appalachian Heritage Highways group, there were many others collaborating to help with the festival. The local Extension Office, the Resource Centers at the schools, the Board of Education, Empowerment Zone businesses, Senior Citizens group, Homemakers group, the Clay County Extension Office, the Folklife Program, and many other volunteers were integral to the process.

Cathy Howell advises that to take on such a project, one must care deeply about the festival and giving back to the community, because the work is long and hard. She says it’s essential to get various community members and groups involved and to solicit energetic volunteers with an upbeat attitude. Ken Williams warns that your organization must be big enough to handle such a project so as to prevent overloading people, which can lead to burnout. He also advises to allot more time than seems necessary because you can never start planning and working early enough to anticipate the bumps in the process.