Kids of all ages enjoy Roaring Youth Jam in Idaho Falls
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IDAHO FALLS — Every year local residents and visitors converge at the Idaho Falls Riverwalk (Greenbelt) for the Idaho Falls Arts Council’s Roaring Youth Jam, an event aimed at getting kids involved in art and music.
This year was no different. The free event was held from Thursday to Saturday and hundreds of people attended. The event featured a variety of arts and crafts tents, booths hosted by local organizations, vendors selling food or other items, musicians singing on stage including the Battle of the Bands, and other entertainment like magicians and superheroes.
Georgina Goodlander, Visual Arts Director for the Idaho Falls Arts Council, headed up this year’s event. The theme was Jump Into Books.
“It was really a joint effort to come up with the theme and the different activities,” she said. “A lot of us on the Art Council are avid readers. The hardest part was narrowing down which books we were going to use as inspiration.”
Craft tents centered around children’s books Where the Wild Things Are, Harry Potter, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Harold and the Purple Crayon and more.
“The activities are for all ages, but we wanted to pick different books that represented different age groups,” Goodlander said.
Of course, at the Youth Jam there are also the yearly favorites set up — such as the Junk Jam, a collection of junk yard metal arranged for children to hit and tap to make beautiful music.
Dixean Grimes, who lives east of Ammon, was at the Lemony Snicket tent working on a chalk drawing on Friday at the Youth Jam.
“My kids used to love to come to this event,” she said. Now that they are grown, Grimes still comes to get ideas for her preschool students. “I think they would love doing this stuff.”
Several local organizations had booths at the Youth Jam, including the Idaho Falls Area Humanitarian Center.
Cindy Branson, who does outreach for the humanitarian center, offered information about the center to parents while their children were decorating wooden figurines.
“We come to the Youth Jam to raise awareness about the humanitarian center,” Branson said. “We service 144 agencies with items they need. We love getting help from volunteers, or donation of items or funds. We definitely think the Youth Jam helps people get to know who we are.”
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game also had a booth at the Roaring Youth Jam; it was filled with information about bear safety, along with bear claws and skins children and parents could handle.
Collett Olson was one of the volunteers at the Fish and Game booth who helped talk to people about bear safety, including the differences between black bears and grizzly bears, and what to do if you encounter a bear.
“We really encourage people to carry bear spray. It can be used on any creature that could potentially harm you,” she said.
She showed people how bear spray works, and encouraged them to properly store it and weigh it every year to make sure it hasn’t leaked.
“We really want people to be safe,” she said.
A new addition to this year’s Youth Jam were several superheroes and princesses for children to take pictures with, including a singing Moana.
“The superheroes and princesses have been a big hit. It’ll probably be a yearly thing,” Goodlander said.
