Jillian French – Arts and Culture Editor

BUAF is back! The annual BU Arts Festival is running from Feb. 11-14, cramming around a dozen events into just four days. The student-led festival has been running for almost a decade at Bishop’s, created to provide Arts Administration and other humanities students with hands-on experience in managing and marketing art. The festival celebrates a diverse range of art forms, blending traditional art exhibits with events featuring film, culinary arts, fashion and more. “It’s a very interdisciplinary festival,” says Elizabeth Lebonte, who does administration and coordination as part of the BUAF team.

Image courtesy of Kendra L. Hughes

“This year,” Elizabeth adds, “we wanted to meet as many different kinds of art forms as possible while keeping something that students would recognize as an art festival.” A few fan-favourite events are returning from last year—the flea market (re-branded this year to the Star Bazaar) will bring clothes, jewelry, candles and other hand-crafted items (made by Bishop’s students) to the Gait on Wednesday, Feb 11. Thursday, Feb. 13, will feature an outdoor movie night in the Quad, screening La La land (2016). Friday will bring an open mic night of poetry and storytelling in the Gait. The festival will finish off with a masquerade ball on Valentine’s Day–Saturday, Feb. 14—at the Lennoxville Golf Club, which offers students an opportunity to dress up for a fun date night out (friends count as dates, too!). “I’m hyped to dress up and make my mask,” says Sandrine Tardiff, who does fundraising for the team. “There’s a mask-making workshop on Wednesday, too… and it’ll be a fun way to end the festival!”

Art exhibits will be up for interested students throughout the whole week in Molson and the LLC Agora, as well as pop-up events throughout the week (check out @buartsfestival on Instagram for events you can catch in between your classes!)

This year, the theme for the festival is Constellations. Kendra L. Hughes, part of the festival’s marketing team, explains the nature of the theme: “It links the present to history—in the past, people used to use the stars as navigation tools, or to tell stories in mythology. The constellation has many meanings that go beyond what we’re doing here at Bishop’s…it’s very symbolic of where artists have been and where they’re going and the various forms that art can take.” The events throughout the week–Star Bazaar, Cosmic Galleries, Celestial Stories–all revolve around this space and star imagery. “Each artist is a star in their own right, and then each star comes together to make a constellation,” Kendra adds. Sandrine sums it up nicely: “We’re all a part of the Bishop’s constellation.”

This year, the team’s goal is to ensure the arts festival is accessible and sustainable. They’re hoping all the events will be free to the Bishop’s, Lennoxville and Sherbrooke community through their crowdfunding work for support. Students from all areas of study are encouraged to attend events, which cover a wide range of interests meant to cast a wide net of engagement. With humanities programs facing widespread cuts across North America, the arts festival at Bishop’s is a rallying cry to celebrate the arts, and to “promote and showcase what we can do at Bishop’s,” according to Sandrine. The team encourages students to show their support for the arts by showing up Feb. 11-14 for some spectacular programming.