Between Sweet Briar College’s expansive campus and its small student body, there are only a few days of the year when the place seems to teem with people.

Amherst County fifth-graders participate in the Musical Theater and Dance workshop during the 20th annual Cultural Arts Day in April 2006.Cultural Arts Day is one of them.

That’s the day the College invites all 347 or so fifth-graders from Amherst County Public Schools to experience the array of visual and performing arts, culture and learning that Sweet Briar has to offer. This year – the program’s 21st – it will happen on Friday, March 30.

Each student attends two 50-minute workshops created and presented by Sweet Briar faculty, staff and students from across academic disciplines. There are 21 offerings this year, including such topics as Arabic writing, archaeology, music and dance.

The program’s purpose is two-fold, says Rebecca Massie-Lane, director of SBC art galleries and the arts management program. First, it reinforces the College’s ties to the Amherst community. Second, it aims to awaken in children an interest in the arts and arts patronage.

“It’s a rare and wonderful opportunity for children in public schools to discover art, and to understand that art can be a life way,” said Lane, who co-chairs the Arts Day steering committee.

She believes that if an artist exists within an individual, it needs a catalyst to fully emerge. “I think you have to encounter art to realize the spark,” she said.

On Cultural Arts Day the encounter can take many forms and might even expand traditional ideas of what we think of as art. SBC director of engineering Jim Durand is taking that view with his new workshop, the “Art of Engineering.”

“It’s an introduction to engineering showing how cool it is and why it’s a creative art just like painting or sculpture,” he said.

Before the fifth-graders can learn and be inspired, they must be fed. The school buses arrive around 9:30 for breakfast at Prothro, the College’s dining hall. It’s a scene that borders on chaotic just because of sheer numbers, although the teachers keep things well in hand, said Jackie Dawson, who is Lane’s longtime co-chair on the Arts Day steering committee.

“You’ve never seen so many big eyes in your life,” she said, describing how they take in the feast before them.

After breakfast, the young students fan out across campus to the workshops, which begin at 10:30. The second starts at 11:30. After a closing ceremony, they head back to the buses and the campus resumes its everyday persona – a place where there’s more going on than sometimes meets the eye.

For more information, e-mail rmlane@sbc.edu or call (434) 381-6248.

– By Jennifer McManamay, SBC staff writer