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SLIDE SHOW. CLICK THE PHOTOS Karl Kaminski, bass, and Gene Bertoncini on guitar perform on the Warren Street stage. Church Street School musicians and students entertained throughout the afternoon. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Kids played on highly original mini-golf courses constructed by the Church Street School's after-school students. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Church Street's teaching artists helped out in the crafts tent. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Church Street's teaching artists helped out in the crafts tent. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
A carousel decorated by Church Street pre-schoolers. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Karaoke was the party's one indoor activity. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Long lines formed for the pony rides. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Church Street teaching artist Jacinta Clusellas directs a chorus of Church Street students Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Bubble-blowing, simple but fun, as demonstrated by Kees Schouten. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
The hula hoops were a hit. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Lisa Ecklund-Flores, director of Church Street School for Music and Art, was surveying the school’s activity-filled block party on Warren Street. “It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” she observed. “It really feels like a community event.”
Indeed, Church Street’s annual party on Sunday, its sixth, had that homey, small-town family feel. There on the school’s block of Warren Street, between Greenwich and West Broadway, were pony rides and crafts, mini golf on courses constructed by the after-school students, a carousel decorated by pre-schoolers, and Church Street students and teachers performing on stage, to name just some of the goings on.
The annual party began six years ago as a big guitar jam to celebrate the school’s 20th anniversary. Since then it has gone from a nearly all-indoor event to this one on Sunday, when everything but the karaoke took to the street.
“Clearly,” Ecklund-Flores said, “that was a formula that worked.”
