When Touchstone Theatre members started to think about what to include in the 20th anniversary reflection of their first major community festival (SteelBound in 1999), the artists considered what issues needed to be represented, and what voices need to be heard. Education director and ensemble member Mary Wright said, “It needs to have kids’ voices.”

In conversation with Bethlehem Area School District art teachers and Assistant Superintendent Jack Silva, they decided to focus on fourth grade. Wright wanted the project to integrate with the art teachers’ established curriculum. In the BASD fourth grade art curriculum, the teachers focus on the theme of “community.” All 1,000-plus fourth graders from the Bethlehem public schools created their visualization of what the future of Bethlehem could be. Their pictures were colored onto recycled sand bags. These images will be strung onto ropes and displayed in Payrow Plaza for the Festival Unbound closing ceremony Oct. 13 at 5:30 p.m.

But that idea wasn’t enough of a statement. To amplify Bethlehem youths’ visions of the future, Touchstone collaborated with fiber artist Mallory Zondag to create a large mural inspired by the students’ work. Zondag is a fiber artist and involved in community engagement. Wright and Zondag brainstormed how to make the piece a community collaborative production as well.

The mural will be constructed through the run of the festival. The base of the mural is plastic snow fencing.

“Its function is like a huge rug hooking project,” Wright said. “Instead of thread, ribbons of cloth will be woven into the form. The public is invited to help ‘fill in’ the colors of the mural.” The cloth ribbons were made by volunteers who cut recycled T-shirts.

When the mural is complete, the banner will hang on the city hall building, the side facing the library. The making of the mural will be outside the library – attached to the wrought iron handrails to the left of the Bethlehem Public Library’s main entrance off Church Street. These projects are for everyone: kids and adults. Touchstone wants everyone to remember how much fun it is to make art. No experience necessary.

The location of Payrow Plaza for the closing ceremony was deliberate. Touchstone believes that the Bethlehem Public Library should also be a part of the festival because it is free and open to everyone.

“There are people in and out of the library all the time. We don’t want the festival to be just something people go and see,” Wright said. “We want this festival to be something people come and do. Art making isn’t only for the professionals. We encourage art making in everybody.”

Anyone coming to the library can sit down and make some art.

One of the themes of the festival is “Just Make Art.” Starting Saturday, Oct. 5 and daily during the festival until Saturday, Oct. 12 in the Bob Cohen Room, volunteers will show people the various kinds of art making available between 10 a.m. and noon and 2-5 p.m. Available projects are individual and collaborative. One collaborative projects is for people to respond to a prompt on five large banners on conference tables. Each day will have a different banner and prompts. The prompts are around the other themes of the festival: 1) The promise and challenges of diversity, 2) Health and the Interconnectedness of All Things, and 3) The Importance of our Youth.

The banners will become part of the march around the library during the closing ceremony. Some of the individual projects will also be placed in the Library windows facing out – becoming a backdrop for the closing ceremony.

For more details on the pARTicipate project as well as 21 performances in locations around Bethlehem and Beyond, visit www.FestivalUnbound.com.