left side of the mural at RCC .EDU Festival
crowd at the music stage
On Saturday, May 15, the first annual .EDU Art and Music Festival was held at the Riverside RCC campus. It was held from 12 pm to 7 pm.
This seven-hour long event was attended by students and locals of all ages. The parking was free and a short distance away making it easy for people to find the festival. It was held on the RCC practice field near the parking structure.
The festival was not well attended, meaning not to many people either knew about it or could not go because of its short notice. This event was not up to par as those that were held at the universities but for its first year it did pretty good.
The art aspect of the festival showed a lot of local artists with their art. On a wall about 40-yards long, graffiti artist each had a section to show their skills and talents. There were a total of five sections where each artist could display their skills with spray paint. From modern paintings to Aztec paintings, the graffiti artists shared all sorts of different styles.
Throughout the festival, there were also art booths filled with paintings from local artists trying to earn a buck for their work. There were around fifteen to twenty canopies scattered around the field to show off their passion for art.
When Justin, a student at RCC, was asked "As a graffiti artist what did you think about the art portion of the festival?" He responded "As an artist I thought it was really different for our school to display that type of art in a county that is very strict about the laws towards graffiti. The mural section also was great for the community to see that this type of art can have a positive impact on our community."
The one aspect that didn't receive much attention was the food stands. Even though it was a good day to eat BBQ and Mexican food, the stands always seemed vacant. Due to the poor setting of the stands it brought them little to no customers.
The food stands were set up outside hiding behind a tarp covered fence, away from the art and music stages. This lead to poor sales and a crowd hunting for food.
The last but not least aspect was the music. The music was loud enough to be heard throughout the festival. The genres included Hip-Hop, Rhythm and Blues. The performers were local upcoming artists who had not much of a crowd to entertain.
The lack of people made it difficult for the artist to get the crowd hyped. It seemed as if majority of the crowd wasn't into the style of their music or performances. However there was a portion of the crowd that did enjoy the music and lifted their hands to the beat.
Overall the .EDU Art and Music Festival did a good job in bringing a new form of entertainment to RCC. Being the first one, there can only be room for improvement. Even though not many people attended the festival, it still got people from the community to participate. Next time, RCC should think about publicizing it more in order to induce a bigger crowd.
