A few years ago, as a part of a national symposium about student engagement in the performing arts, some of my colleagues, primarily those from the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, talked about the concept of a new initiative they were doing called “Push 4 Art.” The idea was to create a more direct connection between performers and audience members by eliminating the artificial distinctions of the traditional concert hall. Essentially, someone presses a button and gets a performance right in front of them (whether they really wanted it or not).
After that meeting, one of my students loved the idea and got the rest of the students on board for the following school year. After a few rounds of design, construction, and paint we had our own button to wheel around campus and a new tradition was born. This year, we went out for the third time at UT, although with a slightly different twist.
That twist was that instead of doing just one day for the whole day, we were going to do several days across a week to try more different types of locations and hopefully free up a few more performers. Our performers included some individual instrumentalists, the Magic Club, and the Salsa Dance club.
This exemplifies some of what I love about this event. In some settings, having non-majors representing dance or considering magicians doing card tricks on the street wouldn’t be considered “art.” In fact, one of the other campuses who tried Push 4 Art had trouble with some faculty in their music school saying that the event should really be called “Push for Expression” since it wasn’t going to be exclusively classically trained music majors or some other such nonsense.
But we don’t think that way. If we did, we wouldn’t have great moments like our director hitting a Magic Club member in the face with a bracelet after being shocked about his trick. Or multiple school groups on field trips stopping and hitting the button multiple times to get every performance we had. Or random people on the way to see a Broadway show dancing along with the salsa club.
It’s these kinds of things that make Push 4 Art so wonderful. We are able to find other people on campus passionate about sharing the arts and help them reach a much different audience than normal.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you see a random red button rolling around a public place that says “art” on it somewhere, go ahead and press it. Because Push 4 Art is like a box of chocolates – sweet, interesting, and at times unexpected. But you just can’t resist.
Obligatory Tower Shot