Kauffman Center Featured More Than 500 Young Performers During Virtual Future Stages Festival

This weekend, the Kauffman Center's eighth annual Future Stages Festival showcased more than 500 youth artists virtually through the Kauffman Center's digital and social media channels. The festival highlighted video performances, including some from the Kauffman Center's stages, and family-friendly activities.

Twenty-two performing arts organizations headlined the free virtual event that welcomed viewers from across the city and beyond. Audiences reveled in more than a dozen youth performance videos via the online portal. Five special YouTube Premiere videos debuted on June 12 showcasing prerecorded performances filmed on the Kauffman Center stages. Guests also interacted with community partner-led Facebook Live segments on June 13 and enjoyed a family-friendly activity booklet full of coloring pages, matching games, do-it-at-home crafts and more. Video content from the two-day festival has been viewed more than 4,500 times so far. Virtual Future Stages Festival is presented by the Kauffman Center's Premier Partner, Saint Luke's Health System.

For the past eight years, Future Stages Festival has invited artists of all ages to share their diverse performance styles on the Kauffman Center's stages, ranging from traditional Indian dance to classic American Jazz. Since 2014, the in-person festival has:

• Featured 4,000+ youth performers
• Highlighted 70+ community arts performance groups
• Welcomed 30,000+ guests to the Kauffman Center
• Presented dozens of arts activities for guests of all ages

In 2020, Future Stages Festival embraced a virtual format to keep the community safe. This virtual festival:

• Reached nearly 35,000 users via Facebook livestreams from debut, on June 14, through July 30
• Welcomed more than 6,000 views on Future Stages Festival webpages
• Featured more than 700 youth performers in video content
• Garnered more than 600 Festival Guide views and more than 300 Activity Booklet views as of July 30, 2020

"The Kauffman Center is so proud to share Future Stages Festival with our community for an eighth straight year," Paul Schofer, Kauffman Center President and CEO, said. "This signature community event allows us to create family-friendly programming that supports the growth of our young Kansas City artists. While we would certainly prefer to have everyone at the Kauffman Center in person, we virtually turned a bright spotlight on these talented performers, and we are so excited by how determined our community was to join us as we celebrated Kansas City's vast diversity in the arts."

Through activities like Future Stages Festival, the Kauffman Center's Open Doors Spotlight on Youth program welcomes young performers to the Kauffman Center's stages. Building a professional on-stage experience filled with support and encouragement allows these young performers to grow and challenge themselves in their art.

In addition to Spotlight on Youth, the Kauffman Center's Open Doors program offers transportation subsidies so students from all schools can attend matinee programs, provides free community tickets to non-profit agencies and designs opportunities for students to engage with Kauffman Center staff through workshops and internships. Through its various initiatives, the Open Doors program is vital to the Kauffman Center's efforts to promote and invest in arts advocacy.

"The Kauffman Center continues to nurture a supportive environment that welcomes performing artists locally, nationally and beyond. It is exciting to see the next generation of performing artists share their talents with audiences near and far," Schofer said. "Young people are the future of the arts. Investing in our future and demonstrating our ability to support young artists amid these unique times builds resilient and inventive youth that will transform our future."

Kansas City and its surrounding region is home to thousands of talented young artists, each with a dream of performing on the big stage. The Kauffman Center is committed to recognizing the talents of youth performers at the annual Future Stages Festival, helping local artists dance, sing and perform their way into living rooms across the city. With viewers commenting in real time on livestreams and putting their hands together virtually by posting on social media with the hashtag #VirtualFutureStages, the community continued to show these young performers how much they appreciate and support them.

The 2021 Future Stages Festival featured performances by:

18th Street Combo from Kansas City Jazz Academy
AileyCamp the Group
Chilanka School of Dance
Crescendo Conservatory
Gurukul Dance Company
Heart of America Youth Ballet
HK Chinese Folk Dance Group
Harmony Project KC
ICE STUDIOS School of Dance
Kansas City Ballet School
Kansas City Boys Choir/Kansas City Girls Choir
Kansas City Movement

KC Youth Percussion Ensemble
Lawrence Ballet Theatre
Lily Zhang Li Taylor Dance Academy
Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Kansas City
MSA Crescendo Project Orchestra
Pythons Drill Team
String Sprouts KC
The A-Flat Youth Orchestra
The Culture House Conservatory of Dance Youth Ensemble
Youth Symphony of Kansas City, Symphony Orchestra

Arts Content and Activities provided by:

American Institute of Architects Kansas City
American Jazz Museum
American Theatre Guild
Drum Safari
Global FC (Fútbol Community)
Heart of America Shakespeare Festival
Jan Kraybill
Kansas City Ballet
Kansas City PBS
Kansas City Public Library
Kansas City Symphony
Kathak Aura

Katie Minion, DoodleStation
Lyric Opera of Kansas City
Mattie Rhodes Center
Saint Luke's Health System
Science City
StoneLion Puppet Theatre
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Whole Person
Three Trails Taiko
UMKC Conservatory Academy
Vania Soto

The Kauffman Center Open Doors program connects young people to the arts through three major components:

• The Open Doors Spotlight on Youth initiative offers year-round programs and engagement opportunities that connect young people with the Kauffman Center.
• The Open Doors Community Tickets program offers free and reduced-price performance tickets to underserved audiences through local social service agencies and schools.
• The Open Doors Transportation Fund helps schools offer high quality performing arts experiences to students by eliminating or defraying the costs of bus transportation.

More information about Open Doors programs is available at: kauffmancenter.org/open-doors.

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