The Festival’s unique educational interactive arts environment provides children with a fun, dynamic, and accessible way to discover and learn about diverse art forms and cultures.

From a  Spectator to a Participant

Ten year-old Antonio stares at the sign in front of him: “Instrument Petting Zoo.” A petting zoo, he wondered, for instruments? What happens in there? This I gotta see! Overwhelmed with curiosity, he charges into the tent and joins the other children and several adults busy pulling bows across strings on cellos, fingering reeds used for saxophones, and pushing the valves on tubas as they blow air through their piping to create the first notes of This Land is Your Land.  Shocked by some of the sounds and marveling at others, participants thank the instrument “wranglers” for giving them this opportunity to touch and play instruments they’ve only seen from afar.  For more than one child over the years, the petting zoo was the “hook” they needed for participation in middle and high school band programs and a life-time playing great music.

This is just one activity at the International Children’s Festival held each year at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia, and produced by the Arts Council of Fairfax County.  Children from age 1 to 101 are engaged by musical, acrobatic, and oratory performers from all over the world, many of them children younger than 16, as well as craft workshops, storytelling, puppets, hands-on technology, professional clown troupes, international food, games, and sports – and this is just the short list!

Wolf Trap is the only national park dedicated to the performing arts, and during the Festival we fill every indoor and outdoor space with compelling activities that turn passive spectators into full participants in music and the arts through many diverse cultures.  From the arts and technology pavilion to the grand tents in the rolling fields to the multiple outdoor stages including the internationally recognized Filene Center amphitheatre nestled among the trees, all visitors are invited to become something more than they are through the arts.  There’s no other children’s festival like it in the world.

Focus on Education while having Fun

One of the important factors that sets this festival apart from all others is its focus on education while having fun. Learning about diverse cultures, music, and the arts is paramount in the planning and execution of festival events and activities. Festival planners come from a variety of education and leadership backgrounds, and their collective insight creates a massive scope of learning opportunity:

At the International Children’s Festival, the abstract and distant become concrete and personal. To non-musicians, for example, music is something other people do.  They haven’t had the opportunity to play the bongo drums, place a violin under their chin, paint the Chinese character for their name, or chant and clap in rhythm with professional dancers.  Like children with faces pressed against a candy shop’s window, they’re envious of the joy and identity others find in playing their instruments, doing their craft, or dancing to their music. An hour at the festival, however, changes all that. Children quickly declare, “I want to do this,” and even better, “I can do this.”

In recent years, students have stood beside professional performers from New York City learning to dance for Broadway, blown mightily through an 8-foot alphorn, juggled whirling Diablo spools on strings with Chinese performers, and danced with four generations on stage to everything from the Temptations to the Jonas Brothers.  In the Festival’s Arts and Technology Pavilion, they’ve learned to command robots, design roller coasters, create green-screen movie magic, and explore green technology that protects our environment.  In other venues around the park, they’ve learned to unicycle, juggle, act, tell stories, and sing solos center stage, all while enjoying the company of children outside their normal social circles. For the duration of the Festival and in the months and years beyond, divisive race relations and politics are kept at bay, and the world is a pretty cool place. Add to that, they’ve started to learn some new skills that help give life meaning, and perhaps even a way to make a living.

Moving Beyond Borders

This personalization and connection are not limited to musical instruments and dance.  One local educator commented after the festival….

“Several of my students really connected with the children’s orchestra from Costa Rica.  After spending time with their group at the Festival, they exchanged e-mail addresses and CD’s of music.  They connected so much that after the sports section, the international articles on anything happening in Costa Rica were the first articles my students read in our local paper, The Washington Post.  Short of visiting the country for several weeks or housing an exchange student for a year, I’m not sure there’s a better way to begin a personal interest in other cultures.”

Unless they’ve done some extensive traveling outside our borders, students born and raised in the United States tend to be less aware and appreciative of other cultures.  Other countries are just one more place to color on their geography worksheets.  Part of this is the egocentric nature of human development at these ages, but another part is the society in which we live.  To break through this apathetic trend and help students realize their global citizenship, the Festival organizers go out of their way to increase the interactive nature of every performance and craft at the festival.  In the pavilions and tents in the meadow, for example, local and international performing groups present a 20-minute version of their longer shows, then invite children and their families (or group leaders) on stage to try the instruments, learn the dances, and wear the costumes. While they don’t always share the same language, they do share the same laughs, the same uncertainty when learning, the same excitement when hearing the first beats of big tympani drums, and the same humanity.  They connect and Bolivia is no longer a test question; it’s a person, a culture, a groove.

And with it, an international, arts-filled future is within our reach.