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Recreation and Arts

  • The East Lansing Recreation and Arts program is operated by the City of East Lansing's Parks and Recreation Department. It provides classes, workshops, and special activities designed to meet the community's recreation, fine arts, child care, and leisure times interest needs. MSU graduate students have volunteered their time to help with special projects and MSU faculty members have served as advisors to ELRA.

    Students from the MSU Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, through internship and field work courses, provide a variety of services to the East Lansing Recreation and Arts organization. These include answering phones, making Santa calls to children at Christmas time, updating computer databases, working with the basketball and soccer programs as volunteer coaches, organizing T-ball leagues, organizing the Annual Nursery Olympics, and assisting with other special recreational events. Students from the MSU Art Department, majoring in Art Education, get the opportunity to design and teach adult classes in ceramics, drawing, and sculpture, as well as art classes for children. They have also worked as lab techs in the ELRA pottery studio, assisting instructors with material procurement and overseeing the firing operation.

  • MSU students and Psi Upsilon Fraternity provide approximately 10-15 volunteer coaches and referees to the EL Police Athletic League.
  • The Young Playwrights Festival is a collaborative effort between MSU's Wharton Center and MSU's Department of Theatre. The festival invites high school students from the tri-county area to submit original one-act scripts. The scripts are judged and the six finalists plays are performed at Wharton Center for the schools and the public. The plays are performed, directed, and crewed by students from the MSU Theatre Department.
  • Four years ago the MSU Department of Theatre started a two-week, non-residential workshop in the performing arts for local area high school students. The program is called "Theatrix." While the program is not free, it was started to provide a lower cost alternative for local youth interested in the performing arts who were financially unable or did not have the available time to attend Interlochen or Blue Lake Fine Arts camps.
  • The MSU Wharton Center's Act One School Series provides an opportunity for local area K-8 students to attend live theatre performances at a very low cost. In addition, volunteer docents visit school classrooms to share information about the performance and the performing arts. In addition, an evening college course and the "Shadow Days" program provide community members and local area teachers the opportunity to learn about the management side of the performing arts.
  • The Kresge Art Museum has over 60 volunteer docents who provide tours for approximately 2,500 local area school children each year. Grades K-5 can participate in an "Introduction to Art" tour and grades 6-12 an "Art in the Humanities" tour. In addition, orientation videos and teacher's resource kits containing pre- and post- tour activities are made available, on loan, free of charge. Admission to Kresge is free and docent-lead tours for adult groups and university student groups are available through advance registration. Many Kresge projects, such as Botanica (exploring the intersection between botanical life systems and the visual arts) and the Michael Shaugnessy project (a large-scale outdoor sculptural installation), involve community members and volunteers. MSU art faculty also serve on the Sculpture Committee for the City of East Lansing.