New Arts Venture Challenge awards student innovators

It’s not every day that a judge is so torn between two competitors that he produces $500 out of his own pocket just so he won’t have to choose.

Yet that’s exactly what happened during the New Arts Venture Challenge at the Arts Enterprise Symposium over the weekend of Jan. 30. When the judges couldn’t decide on the second place winner of $500, one came forward and matched the prize to create an additional second place.

The New Arts Venture Challenge invited students from all departments to submit a written proposal for an arts event, exhibition, series or project. Four finalists were then notified and asked to give a presentation at the Arts Enterprise Symposium, which took place between Jan. 30 and Feb. 1.

The Symposium, as well as the Challenge, are new this year and are the brainchild of Stephanie Jutt, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of flute; and Samantha Crownover, executive director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society of Wisconsin.

“[The Challenge] is giving students an actual opportunity to make up something they really want to do, say what it is, and then have the opportunity to actually do it,” says Jutt. “To see a project through from start, from the imagination to finished product-that’s what [the Challenge] is for.”

Although the New Arts Venture Challenge is new this year, Jutt says they received 24 proposals.

“It was just like Christmas opening all those proposals,” she says. “There’s such a wealth of creative energy here and tapping into that, giving that a place to be shown is really a fun activity.”

The first place team was awarded with $2,000 to go toward producing their event and mentoring from Jutt and Crownover. The second place winners each also received mentoring from the co-creators and $500.

The judges awarded first place to UW–Madison senior Rachel Felton and junior Charles Workinger for their proposal, “University Student Small Ensemble Partnerships,” which endeavors to partner UW–Madison with Madison area high schools to help students learn about and form chamber music groups.

Felton is majoring in clarinet performance and communication arts while Workinger is double majoring in business and music.

“I learn the most through chamber music experiences,” Felton says. “So why not start these new experiences when they’re at a younger age?”

Both Felton and Workinger point out that one of the inherit benefits of playing in a chamber music group is that you are the only one responsible for your part.

Felton and Workinger will use their funding to host a kickoff event in October where they will bring high school students to the university and have them listen to student chamber music groups and attend master classes and clinics.

“It’s a chance we realized is probably once in a lifetime to have the freedom and resources and the assistance to do this,” Workinger says. “The opportunity to take that chance and make it happen is something we’re both very, very grateful for.”

One of the second prizes went to UW–Madison graduate student in piano performance Douglas Jurs for his proposal, “Madison Music/Future Festival ‘Beyond Genre, Beyond Limits.'”

Jurs modeled his proposal after the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which, rather than choosing the best proposals, allows every proposal the chance to play.

“The idea originates from some convictions that I’ve developed during my years of music study, and from occasional frustration I’ve felt that at times the culture behind classical music can feel restrictive or elitist,” he says. “I wanted to build a festival that would be fun above all, that would empower classical musicians to be creative and have a good time on their own terms.”

The other second prize went to Chris Martinez and Kevin Burgess for “Fly Boy Carnival Fashion Show,” a fashion show born of a company that promotes lifestyle as well as fashion.