Kaneland Community Fine Arts Festival

The Kaneland Community Fine Arts Festival has celebrated 25+ years of connection between student and professional visual artists, hands-on workshops, and professional performing artists and groups. Each year the festival draws 3,000+ attendees for a day of culture and fun. Since the first festival in 1998, the festival has grown immensely, bringing in a huge variety of artists of many mediums. 

The festival is the founding and signature event of the Kaneland Arts Initiative.  The Festival involves approximately 30 professional, contracted artists from the Chicagoland area representing multiple artistic disciplines. This unique event is one of the only festivals in Illinois supported by a school district to present professional artists free of charge to festival attendees.  The Festival features both professional visual and performing artists as well as student artwork from all of the schools within the district.  KAI is pleased to continue the artist in residency program which will provide students with yearlong creating with an end project that will be revealed at the Festival.

Theresa Funke and Bonnie Whildin created the festival while they were elementary visual arts teachers in the Kaneland school district. They dreamed a dream for the Kaneland school district’s students, their families, and the entire community. That dream transformed into the Kaneland Fine Arts Festival, which eventually blossomed into something much bigger. Today the Kaneland Arts Initiative provides Arts programming and events year round to the Kaneland students, their families, the community and beyond.