By STEPHA POULIN
BG Independent News Correspondent
Families imagined their own creations at the Black Swamp Arts Festival on Sunday.
The Youth Arts Village was designed to engage everyone from toddlers to caregivers, offering nine activities including hat decorating, crayon melting and hula hoop weaving.
“We get the teeny-tiny [kids], and parents love making the hats too,” said Katie Steiner, the festival’s youth art chair.
Kids ranging from knee height to pre-teen ran around the Youth Arts Village, some dressed up as a pink princess or Batman. People of all ages listened to silly songs at the Family Stage.
Steiner envisioned kid-oriented activities with the whole family in mind.
“Katie really had a vision for the youth area,” Festival Chair Bill Donnelly said. “The vision of really challenging kids while they think they’re just knocking some boxes over.”
Activities like playing with a parachute and building forts with boxes kept toddlers engaged, and some activities — like making spray bottle art — required little supervision.
Without much help from volunteers, families built non-functional, but imaginatively designed, robots.
“The robots are way less dependent on help from volunteers,” Steiner said. “And people have been making some interesting stuff, [like] can and milk-jug rockets.”
The hat designing activity has been a festival tradition for years, Steiner said. Parents and kids can combine packing paper, colorful tape and decorative materials like pipe cleaners.
Maumee residents Marcie and Matt Frye made a hat with their 2-year-old daughter Francie and 1-year-old son Zeke.
Sunday was the Frye family’s first time in the Youth Arts Village, although they’ve attended the festival for a few years, they said.
Volunteers helped the family design their hat, wrapping various colors of paper around a frame to create the flat-topped hat’s shape.
Francie helped her mom choose decorations for the hat. They decided to add on some purple pipe cleaners. Francie smiled in approval.
Meanwhile Zeke needed a quick diaper change in the grass.
“I think that’s what makes it a good festival,” Matt said of the kids’ activities. “Rather than just stuff on display, there’s things for the kids to do.”
Hat designing has grown in popularity since Steiner’s first festival.
In 2017, “everyone kept saying this is our busiest festival yet.”
And it’s continued to grow. In 2017, the festival ordered supplies for 1,500 kids. Now they order supplies for 2,000.
“One of the best things about the Youth Arts Village is that you can do these activities at home,” Steiner said. “It’s been really rewarding to see the festival grow since just being an intern.”
