For the children: O.C. Día del Niño festival returns in April with arts and music

If you’re parenting a preschooler nowadays, you might be their only playmate. A DVR list of cartoons might have become the only way to take a much-needed break, and neighborhood walks might be one of the few ways to tire out your toddler before bedtime.

Now you can add Imagination Celebration, an annual six-week countywide festival of arts for children, to the list of kid’s programming.

It returns on April 17 through May 30 with a mix of low-cost and free, in-person and virtual activities like OC Día del Niño, a Latin American holiday honoring the role of the child in the family and society.

OC Día del Niño typically takes place at the OC Fair & Events Center but returns virtually from April 19 with online programming available through July 31.

“The workshops are designed for parents and kids to do together to develop a lifelong appreciation and participation in art,” said Victor Payan, co-founder of Media Arts Santa Ana. “Studies have shown that participation in the arts is helpful for children academically, emotionally. It really helps them to develop.”

Prerecorded performances, between 15 to 45 minutes, include the Lucky Band, Twinkle Time and Ellas as well as local ballet folklórico, mariachi and theater student groups from Heninger Elementary School and Santa Ana High School.

A variety of workshops, ranging between five and 10 minutes, teach kids interactive arts like creating a painting with watercolor wax of Kukulkan and Maya numbers with artist Yenny Bernal or making puppets out of paper bags with artist Joese Gloria Hernandez.

Some workshops put an emphasis on the more therapeutic aspects of artmaking like creating an accordion-style curandero book out of cardboard, paper and glue with artist Carlos Nieto III.

The idea is that kids will draw images of things that make them happy to look through when they feel sad. Another workshop shows how to make Guatemalan worry dolls, while hearing folk tales from artist and Bowers Kidseum staff Maria Lopez.

“In 2019, we had an estimated 10,000 attendees over two days,” Richard Stein, Arts O.C. president and CEO, said. “It was lively, engaging and festive. This a year into the pandemic, seeing more videos is not going to replicate the full experience of the festival. But it will definitely show the wide variety of talents and extraordinary, rich, artistic community we have here.”

Last year, the festival was canceled one month prior due to coronavirus-related shutdowns, and all performers and workshop artists were paid in full.

Artist couple Lucky Diaz and Alisha Gaddis of Grammy-winning the Lucky Band, who were on the festival’s lineup last year and in previous years, came back to Los Angeles from a six-week tour in China in January 2020. They thought they had narrowly escaped coronavirus. Instead, their scheduled tours for the rest of the year were canceled.

In 2020, they worked on bilingual music videos with performances and animation as well as how-to videos featuring their 5-year-old daughter.

“Alisha always says that we need to give ourselves permission to have more fun, and I think that’s what our music is all about,” Diaz said. “To me it’s really a very important cultural experience that I get to share with my own girls — the code switching, Spanglish, Chicano kind of vibe. The work I get to do is special and it comes from a sincere place.”

Alitzah Weiner Navarro Dallas of Twinkle Time had more than 300 shows canceled in 2020. The Peruvian American performer’s livelihood depends on local and international touring.

“Did I cry for two weeks straight? Yeah,” Dallas said. “It took me five years to get a two-week booking in China. You put in so much time and all of a sudden your world just screeches to a halt.”

She decided to create a daily livestream Monday through Friday on YouTube focusing on bilingual and educational music for children and families in more of a solo performance since the entire band can’t fit into one space.

“It got me up every day in the morning and made me be creative and stay active,” Dallas said.

She also had time to complete projects she’d been thinking about for a while like an upcoming Spanish-language album with the title “A Mi Me Gusta Ser Yo.”

“I think what [OC Día del Niño] is doing is wonderful — they’re giving an outlet to musicians but also highlighting people in the community,” Dallas said. “I love that for kids and I also love that we’re amplifying Latino voices.”

If you watch

What: 10th annual OC Día del Niño
Where: Available online through eldiadelnino.org
When: April 19-July 31
Cost: Free
Information: eldiadelnino.org

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