Creative Music-Making Fest is a free open-house event designed by musician, educator and creativity cultivator, Debbi Ponella, to spark curiosity, creativity, and collaboration through music-making experiences for elementary-aged children and their families. This event brings together IU faculty, students and community partners to explore interdisciplinary approaches to sound and music creation, to provide hands-on opportunities to create music in combination with science, math, literacy, dance and theater and to build community collaboration.
Sessions
Members of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra will be providing an "instrument petting zoo." THe BSO members will introduce children to the musical instruments of the symphony orchestra in this hands-on experience.
Calling all artists! Come create a beautiful aritistric score using water colors, lines, shapes, and whatever your hear'ts desire! Our Bridges MAYO musicians and faculty will interpret it and perform it fo ryou in real time. All ages and experience welcome.
Chilren will have the opportunity to become "time travelers" exploring different historical and cultural settings thorugh sounds, rhythm, movement, and storytelling. Inspried by the energy and creativity of K-pop's rhythmic playfulness, participants create their own short sound-and-movement sequences that express what it might have felt like to live in a particular place and time.
This session offers a chance for exploration of sound and shadows while experimenting and improvising with shadow puppets. Chilren will enter into storyworlds through shifting silhouettes, improvised soundscapes, and playful movement. As shadows stretch or collapse prompting unexpected characters, rhythms shape gesture and pacing, creativity will abound with the interplay of sound and light.
This will feature a few large-scale, interactive instrument installations designed to explore the science of sound through playful experimentation. Participants will be able to investigate vibration, pitch, resonance, and pattern by engaging directly with life-size, buildable sound structures.
Join Education Librarian, Christina Jones, in a seriously silly storytime featuring picture books, puppets, and more. Clap and sing along and discover new an dold favorites, including Mo Willem's book, Because. Participants will have the opportunity to make some musical art and leave with a puppet to retell stories at home.
This will be a space where children can explore music composition at any level---whether they have experience and already develope dideas or have never previously through about composing music. There will be experienced composers, educators, and musicians to guide participants as they delve into the world of music composition.
Reimagining Opera for Kids will offer a short, interactive performance in the School of Education Auditorium.
And More!!!
Creative Collaborators
Debbi Ponella, PhD, is a musician, educator and creativity cultivator who teaches at Indiana University. A longtime advocate for creative elarning in the Bloomington community, she focuses her teaching and research on helping learners of all ages discover their creative voice through music, storytelling, and play. She developed the Creative Music-Making Festi as a joyful space for children and families to experiment, imagine, and play with sound.
Sydni Lockeby Catalano (江红) is a professional dance artist and teacher, currently pursuing a PhD in Chinese pedagogy at Indiana University. She is passionate about learning alongside students as they explore different forms of expression and expand their toolkit of resources to communicate meaning through movement, sound, and language.
As the Head of the Education Library, Christina Jones oversees library operations and manages the scholarly and children’s literature collections. Christina is inspired by the vibrant communities in Monroe County and the IU Bloomington campus. She shares books and stories with local elementary school children at the Education Library and in area classrooms in her capacity as the Education Librarian. In addition, Christina is a longtime member of the Bloomington Storytellers Guild—delighting listeners of all ages with folktales and fables from around the world. She is also dedicated to uplifting stories of Monroe County through her participation on the Board of the Monroe County History Center.
William E. Hawkins is a composer, performer, and conductor currently pursuing his Masters in acoustic and computer music composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. An enthusiastic educator with a passion for combining science and music, he helps students understand how to bring heart and soul to math and logic.
Alexis Markavage is a PhD studen tin Science Education at Indiana University and the creator of Pop-Up Science Sparks, a traveling collection of interactive, museum-style science exhibits. Drawing on her background as an elementary teacher and her current reserach in science learning, she designs large-scale, hands-on experiences that make abstract scientific ideas (Iike force, motion, light, and sound) physically and creatively accessible.
Maggie Polk-Olivo is a musical collaborator, creative, and educator. She holds degrees in music composition and music education from the IU Jacobs School of Music and is a certified Kodaly educator and arts integration specialist, with training in Musikgarten and Orff-Keetman Schulwerk. She is the music teacher at Fairview Elementary School, working alongside Brenda Brenner and the Fairview Violin Project. She also directs Bloomington's Bridges Musical Arts Youth Organization.
Jaeun Won (원자은) is a secondary history teacher from South Korea and a PhD student in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies at Indiana University. Drawing on her love of art and history, and inspired by K-Pop Demon Hunters, she designs imaginative learning experiences that connect history and music in fun and meaningful ways. Through these experiences, she invites students to explore history as a space of play, imagination, and expression, bringing the past to life.
Bo Yang is a PhD student in Art Education at Indiana University. Drawing on her expertise in puppet-making pedagogy, her master's background in music education, and her reserach on multimodal representation as a form of expression, communication and therapeutic practice, she designed a shadow-puppet-inspired music improvisation session that invites participants to engage with art materials in unexpected ways to create music and stories.
