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Live and learn

Today is Arts Everywhere Day. The celebration will feature more than 50 performances, exhibitions and hands-on activities throughout campus.

Ramses paints a black wall.
Arts Everywhere is an initiative to integrate the arts into the campus culture that Chancellor Carol L. Folt announced last July when she named Emil Kang to serve as Special Assistant to the Chancellor for the Arts. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

April 6 will be a day for living the arts, no matter where you go on campus or on Franklin Street.

In its second year, Arts Everywhere Day expands its reach to downtown Chapel Hill  and broadens its scope to include hearing nature and picturing equality. It will be a day to hang out in a wooden igloo in the arboretum, listen to live performances by PlayMakers Repertory Company and students, decorate the House Undergraduate Library with fluorescent tape and chalk up what you want to do before you die.

The daylong event will feature more than 50 performances, exhibitions, hands-on activities and announcements. For a schedule, download the Arts Everywhere app at the App Store or on Google Play.

Chancellor Carol L. Folt launched Arts Everywhere in 2016 as a way to demonstrate how the arts are an essential tool for learning and engaging communities. This groundbreaking campus-wide initiative invests in sustained creative practice, live arts experiences and arts learning, with the goal of making Carolina a leader in transforming the 21st-century liberal arts education.

“It’s Arts Everywhere Day again! With colorful installations and pop-up performances, it will be a day of dancing, singing, artistic expression and creativity. Through the wonder of the arts, the campus will come to life. I can’t wait to see you there,” Folt said.

Arts Everywhere is a strategic initiative that supports the Innovation Made Fundamental pillar of The Blueprint for Next strategic framework and also a signature initiative in the University’s $4.25 billion fundraising effort, the Campaign for Carolina.

“The second annual Arts Everywhere Day reflects the growing partnerships that are critical to all that we do throughout the year,” said Emil Kang, special assistant to the chancellor for the arts. “The day is a way for us to celebrate the power of the arts to bring people together across disciplines, interests and backgrounds. The collaborations featured extend all across campus and into the greater Chapel Hill community.”

For the first time, Arts Everywhere Day includes downtown venues. One of 10 painted Campus and Community Keys pianos will beinstalled for passersby to play on the Social Justice Plaza. The Monumental Voices project will be set up on Franklin St. where organizers will pass out canvas for participants to illustrate.