Board To Halls
This year Westminster replaced Art Board with hallways to make the event even more fun and a bigger deal for grades
This year Westminster replaced Art Board with hallways to make the event even more fun and a bigger deal for grades.
Westminster has evolved and changed over the years as any and all schools do and should. Some people embrace and actively seek out those changes while others wish the old could always stay. One such change this year is hallways in place of Art Board for Spirit Week.
The Spirit Week Committee, run by STUCO, proposed this change to Spirit Week in order to make Art Board bigger and hopefully better. The idea was met with eager enthusiasm from the STUCO committee and a proposal was drafted by senior Kinsley Lawerence and Ashley Woodall, assistant director of student life.
While originally the hope was that the entire hallways of each grade would be decorated, the material of the walls in the hallways would be ruined by tape and/or any other materials normally used during Art Board. The consensus then was to use the hallway between the theatre and the eighth grade stairs because one side of the wall is made of stone and therefore, is able to handle tape.
“We wanted to make Art Board more of a big deal so we thought it would be fun to make it cover the entire hallway leading to the Arena. That way on Community Night the parents and guests get to walk through it while they wait to get their seats, and the Art Board will surround them on all sides rather than just being contained on the board,” said Lawrence.
This is not the first time that hallways have been a part of Westminster’s history. In fact, at the old campus in Ladue, grades would decorate their entire hallways as their Art Board and would get points awarded to them for whichever grade had the best decorations.
“They switched to Art Boards instead of hallways when we came to this campus because of the walls here. I think that they still wanted to keep the aspect of art in Spirit Week, so they thought Art Board would be a good alternative, and it was for awhile, but this year we thought it’d be more fun to make it bigger,” said Lawrence.
While it may seem like it would have been even more fun to decorate the hallways of each grade, due to the material of the walls, only the commons and lockers could be decorated which would make it more difficult than fun for everyone.
Therefore, the hallway leading to the Arena was divided into five sections with each grade (middle school combined) having a section dedicated to their Art Board theme. The themes for hallways correlated with each grade’s group theme on Wednesday. The middle school’s theme was heroes, freshmen had decades, sophomores were safari, juniors had childhood, and seniors had occupations. In order to have hallways finished for parents and guests to see for Community Night, Art Board was supposed to be finished for each grade by Wednesday.
Hallways replacing Art Board seems like it will be here for awhile as STUCO and the administration fully agree and support the idea. Parents and guests get to enjoy the art more as they walk through the hallway leading to the Arena and fully experience the hard work and dedication of the artists and all those who contributed.
The winners of this year’s Art Board was announced on Friday evening after the boys’ varsity basketball game during the Big Night. Sophomores won first place, followed by the juniors and middle school.
