WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., Feb. 17, 2021 — West Liberty University’s MAD (Media Arts and Design) Festival continues this spring with the competition, awards ceremony and more.
“Every spring for more than 20 years, WLU has held this competition for high school students interested in the visual, media, and digital arts. Due to pandemic restrictions, we cannot host our normal in-person festival on campus this spring, but we are still having the competition,” explained Dr. Matt Harder, dean of our College of Arts and Communication. “The competition is now open and we’ll be announcing winners in April. We are also offering virtual workshops to high school students and teachers via Zoom.
The MADFest competition is open to students in grades 10 – 12, who are currently enrolled in a public high school, private high school, or home school in the states of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Each student may enter a maximum of two works in any combination of categories.
Categories include any traditional artistic format, including drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed-media/collage, printmaking, photography, digital art, digital music, audio and video.
“Right now, we want to get the word out to area high school students and teachers to submit their work online at our MADFest portal. High school students can submit their work until March 7 by clicking westliberty.edu/madfest.”
“We’ll release an Awards Ceremony video in mid-April to announce the winners,” he said.
The Festival traditionally includes workshops, professional presentations along with the student media arts awards competition and awards ceremony.
Award announcements will be made during the MAD Festival Virtual Awards Ceremony, which will air in April. All award certificates and prizes will be mailed to the winners.
“As always, we’ll have professionals from various art industries serve as Guest Jurors for the MADFest Competition. We also have a link online that describes our virtual workshops available this year for teachers and students to take part in via Zoom,” Harder stated. Awards include gift cards and scholarships.
Student virtual workshops include topics like Ceramics, Tiny Bookmaking, Mask Making (theater) and Art Therapy subjects. These can be explored online now.
There also are several workshops strictly for teachers: “Intercultural Art Education, “The Art of Self-Care” and “Art + Psychology = Art Therapy.”
For more information on MADFest, email Harder at madfest@westliberty.edu.