Students in San Gabriel USD participated in the virtual Arts Week, which featured visual and performing arts, such as the student violin performance above.
San Gabriel Unified holds weeklong virtual arts week
April 26, 2021
San Gabriel Unified celebrated its talented students recently by holding its first-ever Arts Week.
“The spirit of the SGUSD Arts Week is to motivate and encourage creativity through arts education in the San Gabriel Unified District. San Gabriel USD strives to have everyone in their community to create any kind of art that they feel and celebrate arts education,” said Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator Samantha Theisen during the opening ceremony.
The festival was developed as an initiative of the SGUSD VAPA Strategic Plan which was developed in June 2019. While the Arts Week Festival is virtual this year, the goal is to launch an annual in-person event that celebrates the artistic strengths of students, staff and the community.
The district’s five-day event featured daily activities that you can see, watch and enjoy. Each day, an amazing menu of events featured students’ work, such as open mic events, drama performances, community partner showcases, painting classes, design-based learning, orchestra collaborations and special webinars.
For this inaugural event, community partners from the San Gabriel Education Foundation, the LA County local San Gabriel Branch library, the San Gabriel Valley Musical Theatre and a Saturday Conservatory of Music all provided a window to how arts in the community provide resources for students and staff and inspire students to pursue opportunities, as well as careers, in the arts.
Three special event webinars were also held. They featured district VAPA Instructors from each site, who shared the VAPA opportunities throughout the district; industry career professional panelists in the arts, who provided information on how to pursue art pathways; and guest speakers from UCLA and Cal Institute of the Arts, who conversed on the benefits of arts education.
Students in grades TK-12 were encouraged to submit expressions of art in a districtwide art contest. The submissions will be showcased in a district gallery throughout the summer for the public to enjoy. This weeklong visual and performing arts event is a fundraiser to support initiatives outlined in the SGUSD VAPA Strategic Plan.
All social media and website promotions for the event were created by the district’s Public Relations, Information and Social Media (PRISM) high school student interns.
All featured event links are accessible at www.sgusdvapa.org.
SGUSD Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator Samantha Theisen spoke during the opening ceremony for SGUSD’s Arts Week.