ARTS & CULTURE
By Jennifer Wilson | Photos courtesy of Walton Arts Center
AMP Up the Arts: A Night with the Stars Under the Stars
Supporting and celebrating Walton Arts Center’s arts education programming
AMP Up the Arts on Sept. 11 is so much more than a fundraising event. Held at the Walmart AMP and presented by General Mills, this is an evening under the stars with an intimate benefit concert by R&B superstars Boyz II Men. Proceeds from the event support Walton Arts Center’s arts education programming in the region.
In addition to the stars on the stage, the evening also honors a local arts education advocate for their stellar work in our community with the Dr. Patricia C. Relph Arts Education Advocacy Award. This year, the award goes to Lisa St. John, executive director of elementary education for Bentonville Schools.
The award is named in honor of Relph, an arts learning specialist at Walton Arts Center for more than three decades and the award’s first recipient. It is presented annually at AMP Up the Arts.
“I have enjoyed a long professional relationship with Lisa St. John, and arts education has been the piece that has connected us from the start,” Relph said. “When Walton Arts Center first started doing classroom series performances, she was an assistant principal at Bentonville’s Apple Glen Elementary and made sure her students were some of the first to attend these performances.”
Boyz II Men
As a principal of Osage Creek Elementary, St. John advocated for her school to be a SmART Residency School in 2017. This year-long professional development residency supports and trains teachers as they work to include the arts across the curriculum in order to help students achieve in literacy and develop their ability to collaborate with others. Not only did she make sure Osage Creek teachers received the arts integration training, but she also attended professional development along with the teachers and participated in all the arts integration skill-building activities taught at her school.
“Lisa is an educator who understands how the arts activate all parts of a learner’s brain and motivates learners to practice their skills of personal responsibility, cooperation and creativity in order to show and share their own ideas,” Relph said.
After seeing the benefit of the SmART Residency training for teachers and their students, St. John also got her faculty at Osage Creek involved in Walton Arts Center’s Arts With Education Institute. AWE Institute trains teachers to use the arts to make teaching across the curriculum more engaging and effective. AWE engages teachers in hands-on, interactive workshops presented by John F. Kennedy Center teaching artists. Each year, Walton Arts Center trains approximately 40 teachers and teaching artists at AWE Institute.
St. John continues to be an advocate for arts education training for all teachers, which has positively impacted thousands of local students over the years. Through her continued leadership, Osage Creek Elementary, Vaughn Elementary and Central Park Elementary will be involved in the SmART Residency Program in the 2025-26 school year.
“She is a leader who encourages teachers to put the tool of arts integration in their teacher’s tool belt,” Relph said of St. John. “She is also an educator who knows that learning is active, collaborative, experiential, evolving and reflective.”
Walton Arts Center’s education programming allows more than 26,000 students and educators in Northwest Arkansas to experience free, live theater performances annually. Last year’s AMP Up the Arts raised more than $300,000 for arts education.
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You can support the arts education mission and reserve your seat now when you donate to Walton Arts Center. Donations of $103 or $128.75 get you a seat for the intimate performance. To celebrate 33 years of Walton Arts Center, an additional donation of $33 gets you reserved parking in the Blue, Gold and White lots.
Lisa St. John
Reserve your seat when you make your donation at www.amptickets.com or www.waltonartscenter.org, by calling (479) 443-5600 or in person at the Walton Arts Center Box Office from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on weekdays.
