Journal #8 - Final Friday Extra Credit

Fairmount Final Friday

            On Friday, May 24^th, my Art & the Community Engagement class, under the supervision of Darryl Carrington, hosted a Final Friday event in the meeting house in Fairmount Park, in conjunction with the sexual assault awareness event, Take Back the Night.  The purpose of the A&CE class is to foster a relationship between Wichita State and the Fairmount neighborhood through art.  The Fairmount Final Friday event was the plan we came up with that we could achieve by the end of the semester.  The event went off better than I expected.  Each person in the class displayed at least one artwork.  We actually had a decent turnout thanks to the Take Back the Night event having such great publicity.  We didn't even get our announcement out until the day before the event.  The meeting house is a small building, but it was just big enough for what we needed.  We had student artwork set up on tables in the building and a cellist performing on the small stage.  The cellist is also a WSU student who has her junior recital next week.  Some of the artwork being presented was for sale and some was not.  I believe I was the only person who sold any work.  I had small 4x5” versions of my large and more expensive photos of Fairmount buildings “then and now” for sale for $3 each or 2 for $5 and I made $30.  The first hour or so was pretty slow, but after Darryl made the announcement that we were having a Final Friday event in the meeting house, people started trickling in.  We had the biggest rush right before the Take Back the Night group made their walk from the park to the campus and back in honor of Latisha Davis.  The group walked through the meeting house on their way there and back.  The only problem I had with the event was that some of our classmates left after only about an hour.  They just picked up their work and left, even though it was specified that the event lasted from 6-9PM.  This left a few tables empty in the middle of the room.  One student decided to move his work to take up one table all by himself, but we still had the center tables completely empty.  This just made us look bad and it is unfair to the rest of us who stayed the whole time and helped set up and tear down.  Unfortunately, Darryl is such a nice guy that these people (and the people who have only come to one or two classes) will probably get the same grade as the rest of us.  I would say overall the event was a success, but there were some things we could have done to make it more successful.