'Art is everywhere': Dancing Turtle arts festival celebrates art in everyday lives

Jun. 2—A creative approach to reshaping the Stillwater Arts Festival led to a completely new local arts festival.

Dancing Turtle Interactive Celebration of the Arts will be held on June 16 and 17. Most activities and events will be held in the blocks between Seventh Avenue, Duck Street, Ninth Avenue and Husband Street.

The Stillwater Community Center Foundation collaborated with the Arts and Humanities Council of Stillwater, Oklahoma State University, the City of Stillwater and 16 local businesses to host the event.

"Art is everywhere," said Jim Beckstrom, event coordinator for Dancing Turtle. "It's as important to us as breathing. To try to diminish the value of arts in our lives is like cutting limbs off — because our brain needs all of that to learn how to count, to speak, to learn what words are."

Activities and events include art booths and demonstrations, live music, songwriting classes, music and dance workshops, a downtown street dance and flash mob, theater, film, kid's art fun zones, food trucks, vendors and craft beer.

Beckstrom helped coordinate the music festival that normally coincided with the arts festival in April, and he said after last year's festival the team decided that April was not a good month for musicians.

Musicians can't perform in freezing temperatures, and inevitably, one day of the two-day event in April would be cold.

Beckstrom met with Billy McCollum, president of the Arts and Humanities Council of Stillwater, and Mike Staubus, communications coordinator for the event — to brainstorm ideas for a new arts festival date.

McCollum agreed the team should move the arts festival to June to complement the music festival.

"Our last several festivals have been held in April (and) we've experienced a lot of cold, rainy days," McCollum said. "(To) avoid that we decided to try to have this celebration of the arts in June."

He said another key factor for the new festival date was bringing more awareness to the arts festival.

"We are very excited about the new concept and people I've talked with are enthusiastic," McCollum said.

One major difference is the size of the event — it's bigger and bolder.

The team has adapted to the new date and expanded their offerings — bringing in a greater variety of the arts. They have added workshops, demonstrations and more artist and musical performance venues.

The team's goal is to bring awareness to the art in people's everyday lives and help them celebrate it — even things they don't associate with the arts, like science or car design.

Beckstrom said there's a hyper focus on technology, but even NASA scientist Moogega Cooper, the Lead Planetary Protection Engineer for MARS 2020, stated that the most important part of science is art, and people need artists to help visualize the scientific concepts they're seeing.

"If you've never seen a planet before, it takes an artist to translate (those) concepts," Beckstrom said. "Art is playing a big role in how you're viewing the world, because the lines of that car appeal to you ... an artist designed that car."

Beckstrom said that when people get into their cars, they often turn on the radio to listen to music.

"They are making a very subconscious or conscious decision to bring art into their existence because it's important to them," Beckstrom said.

Plans to grow Dancing Turtle are already in motion. The team hopes to "hit the ground running" when Block 34 opens, Beckstrom said.

"Our objective is bigger and bigger and bigger — that's where we're headed with this," Beckstrom said. "It's good for the economy, it's good for the City of Stillwater."