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photo: Jamesmac96
The KFC Yum! Center, in partnership with the YMCA of Greater Louisville, will host “Fit Tuesday” exercise classes on the arena’s Norton Healthcare Plaza every Tuesday evening at 5:45PM from June 6-August 29. No classed will be held July 4 or 11. The 45-50 minute complimentary classes will be taught by certified fitness instructors from the YMCA and are open to people of all ages and fitness levels. Advance registration is not required and participants do not need to bring any equipment, though an exercise mat, water bottle and sweat towel are recommended for most classes.
iHeart Media’s 100.5 Kiss-FM will play music for each class, conduct prize giveaways and give guests a chance to meet their favorite on-air radio personalities.
Class Schedule:
- June 6 – Dance Fitness
- August 1 – Turbokick
- June 13 – Boot Camp
- August 8 – Zumba
- June 20 – Insanity
- August 15 – POUND
- June 27 – POUND
- August 22 – Yoga
- July 18 – POUND
- August 29 – Boot Camp
- July 25 – Zumba
“We’re excited to bring Fit Tuesdays to our plaza,” said Dennis Petrullo, General Manager of the KFC Yum! Center. “Creating unique events to keep the community engaged with the KFC Yum! Center is important to us so this opportunity for area residents and visitors to exercise together and enjoy Downtown Louisville helps us meet that goal.”
“This partnership provides a great opportunity for the Y to enhance our focus of improving the health and well-being of our community,” said Steve Tarver, President and CEO, YMCA of Greater Louisville. “Group fitness classes are fun and offer a great way for residents to connect. Providing free classes is a perfect way to extend the Y’s mission of building healthy spirit, mind and body for ALL.”
For more information, visit www.kfcyumcenter.com.
Jefferson Memorial Forest will connect with thousands of other campers and the great outdoors on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25, as they host the annual Great American Campout.
The Great American Campout, in its 13th year, is a great way for friends, families, and children experience nature, sleep under the stars and create lasting family memories. Jefferson Memorial Forest will provide the campfire, story-telling, and night hikes; you provide your dinner, breakfast, and tent.
In the morning campers will have the day to explore the Forest by hiking any of our 35 miles of trails, fishing at Tom Wallace Lake with free fishing poles provided at the Welcome Center, or unleashing your adventurous side by taking on the GoApe tree-top adventure course (reservations with GoApe required).
The price of the campout is $25 per family of (4), and $5 each additional family member. Platform tents are available to rent at a cost of $15.
Pre-registration is required by calling the Forest’s Welcome Center at (502) 368-5404.
With school out and temperatures getting warmer, Councilwoman Vicki Aubrey Welch (D-13) is once again sponsoring FREE Family Swim Nights at the Fairdale Pool beginning on Thursday, June 8th.
“With busy schedules and parents working, sometimes families just don’t have the chance to have some fun during the week,” says Welch. “Cooling off at the pool is a great way to spend quality time together, and I am glad to be able to offer this free event at one of the best pools in Metro Louisville.”
The Fairdale Pool is located at Hornbeck Park 709 Fairdale Road. The FREE Family Swim Nights will be offered on Thursdays from June 8th to July 27th. The hours of operation for this special event are 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
Regular pool hours are 1:00pm to 6:00pm Tuesday through Sunday.
Admission is free but parents or guardians must be with their children at all times during the event. No drop offs are allowed. Proper swimwear is required.
“I want to invite everyone to come out have some fun and maybe get in a little exercise,” says Welch. “I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to enjoy the summer.”
For more information, contact Councilwoman Welch’s office at 574-1113.
Louisville Metro Public Art together with the Commission on Public Art has announced two new projects developed by Louisville artists. The public art projects are focused on pedestrian and cycling experiences in Louisville, and will invite community involvement and participation. Artists Lance Newman and Todd Smith were selected for their innovative approach to public art in the form of poetry and technology, and how we encounter art in our city sidewalks, streets, and bridges.
“Public art can take many forms. As our city grows and changes, so do the artists and their unique approach to contemporary topics,” Public Art Administrator Sarah Lindgren said. “We are thrilled to partner with Lance and Todd whose projects will captivate Louisvillians and visitors. These artworks will enhance our daily experience as we walk to work, catch the ZeroBus, go to a concert, or cross the Ohio River.”
Descriptions of both projects are below:
Love in the Street: This project supports Louisville’s growing poetry scene and enhances the pedestrian experience on 4th Street for tourists, employees, concertgoers and more. Louisville poet Lance G. Newman II is the artist and curator who conceived the project to invite place-based poems and stamp them into the 4th Street sidewalk between Broadway and Chestnut in conjunction with the forthcoming streetscape project in 2018. A call for poems will be announced this summer.
Bike Sense Louisville: This project connects cyclists, technology and sound to capture and reflect data in real-time. Artist Todd C. Smith will use sensor units attached to the handlebars of 100 volunteer cyclists to create a web-based data visualization and a sound composition that will be streamed online and on the speakers of the Big Four Bridge. The sound composition will be determined by the activity of the cyclists. Along with general location, the sensor units on the bikes of volunteer cyclists will also gather ambient temperature and carbon monoxide gas data. The project will take place over one year starting in summer 2017.
The citizen cyclists will represent a cross-section of bike users in Louisville, from hobbyists to regular commuters. To volunteer as a cyclist, please visit https://www.bikesense.net/
Credit: KY State Parks
The grand opening for a new splash pad at E.P. “Tom” State Park will be Saturday, June 3, at 11:30 a.m.
State and local officials will be on hand to open the splash pad. Admission to the pool area will be free from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday. There will be refreshments, music and prizes.
The celebration is being organized by the Tom Sawyer State Park Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the park. The foundation played a critical role in raising the funds that paid for the splash pad.
The youth pool at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park has not been able to open for several years because of federal swimming pool regulations that could not be met. A fund-raising campaign to pay for installation of a splash pad where the youth pool was located was initiated by the park’s foundation board. The funds were raised with the support of Mr. Sawyer’s family and members of the Louisville Metro Council. Construction ensued in summer 2016.
The park is named for Erbon Powers Sawyer, who was a Jefferson County Judge/Executive and local attorney. Daughters Diane Sawyer and Linda Sawyer Frankel are longtime supporters of the park as was their late mother, Jean Sawyer Hayes.
E.P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park is a 580-acre park within the urban landscape of the city of Louisville and serves as the only state park within Jefferson County. Recreational facilities include an Olympic-size outdoor pool; fully functional gymnasium with basketball, badminton and pickleball courts; athletic fields for soccer, lacrosse and flag football; a three-field softball complex; tennis courts; archery range; radio controlled airfield; and BMX bicycle track.
Meeting space is available with small classrooms in the administrative building or the large reception hall and conference room found at the Sawyer Hayes Community Center. The park also has three picnic shelters.
During the month of June the Kentucky Artisan Center will present “The Sands of Time” a 10 ton sand sculpture by Damon Farmer; a reading by Kentucky’s new Poet Laureate Frederick Smock, demonstrating artists creating handmade artist books, and authors Crystal Wilkinson and Terry Foody signing copies of their books.
The month begins with a demonstration on June 3, by Whitney Withington who joins recycled wood, decorative handmade papers, waxed linen threads and hand-torn archival pages with Coptic stitch binding. Her journals give creative space for people’s drawings and stories.
The Kentucky Artisan Center celebrates Kentucky’s 225th Anniversary with the creation of an original sand sculpture by internationally known sand sculptor Damon Farmer, bringing Kentucky history to life in sand.
Beginning on Saturday, June 3 and continuing on June 4, June 5 and June 6, Farmer will sculpt a huge pile of compacted sand into intricate imagery. From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on June 4, 5, and 6, visitors are invited to watch Farmer carve and shape sand using only the simplest of tools. Carving from top to bottom, he will carefully sculpt the wet sand to illustrate moments in Kentucky’s history. Come watch!
On Friday, June 9, the Kentucky Artisan Center will celebrate the completion of a historic sand sculpture by Damon Farmer, with an open to the public event beginning at 10:30 a.m. The artist will be present along with guest speakers including Tourism, Arts and Heritage Deputy Secretary Regina Stivers, Travel and Tourism Commissioner Kristen Branscum and newly designated poet laureate Frederick Smock, of Louisville, reading selected poems. The celebration will continue all day long as visitors can enjoy free birthday cake, a candy tasting by Ruth Hunt Candy and cheeseburgers for $2.25 all day.
Then on Saturday, June 10, artist Linda Kuhlmann, of Berea, will demonstrate how she creates her one-of-a-kind books from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Kuhlmann began making journals in response to the way the process of writing is changing in society. With acronyms and emoticons are being used instead of words, Kuhlmann hopes that the handmade journals she makes will speak to the more personal and artistic side of writing.
Also on June 10, the Center will offer free guided gallery tours of the exhibit “225: Artists Celebrate Kentucky’s History” at both 11 a.m. and again at 2 p.m.
On June 17, three members of the Berea Welcome Center Carvers will demonstrate a variety of woodcarving styles and techniques from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Then on Saturday, June 24, to help celebrate books, well-known author Crystal Wilkinson and newly published author Terry Foody will be signing copies of their books from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Center.
Wilkinson recently won the Ernest J. Gains Award for Literary Excellence and her book “The Birds of Opulence” was named the winner of the 2016 Weatherford Award for Fiction and the 2017 Judy Gaines Young Book Award..
Author Terry Foody has worked in community health in New York State and Kentucky, taught nursing at
Kentucky State University, and coordinated research projects at the University of Kentucky. She has lectured about cholera for the Kentucky Humanities Council and written the book, “The Pie Seller, The Drunk, and the Lady: Heroes of the 1833 Cholera Epidemic in Lexington Kentucky.”
Both Authors will be available to talk about their writing and sign copies of their books from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day at the Center.
The Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea is located at 200 Artisan Way, just off Interstate 75 at Berea Exit 77. The center’s exhibits, shopping and travel information areas are open daily, year-round, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the cafe is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more information about center events call 859-985-5448, go to the center’s website, or visit the center’s Facebook page.
As school wraps up for the summer, Mayor Greg Fischer is reminding parents and caregivers that there are plenty of learning opportunities for Louisville students of all ages over the next three months.
During a news conference at the Newburg Library, the Mayor and others outlined a number of programs designed to keep kids engaged and prevent summer learning loss, including the Louisville Free Public Library’s Summer Reading program, and the 2017 Cultural Pass — presented by Churchill Downs in partnership with the Mayor’s Office, the library, the Arts and Culture Alliance and the Fund for the Arts.
“As parents, we all know that a week or so after classes end, the kids complain, ‘I’m bored!’ Well, there is no reason for any young person in Louisville to be bored this summer,” the Mayor said. “Thanks to partners like Churchill Downs, there is a long list of activities and learning opportunities to keep kids engaged.”
And in celebration of both the Library’s Summer Reading Program and the Cultural Pass, the Mayor announced, the Main Library will host the Super Summer Reading Kickoff and Cultural Pass Showcase on Saturday, June 3, from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. This free, family-friendly event will offer a plethora of activities, performances, and crafts featuring more than two dozen members of the Arts and Culture Alliance. Participating groups will include the Louisville Zoo, Kentucky Science Center, Frazier History Museum, Kentucky Shakespeare, and more. For more information, please visit LFPL.org/Kids or call (502) 574-1620.
The Cultural Pass supports and encourages lifelong learning by providing free access to 38 of Greater Louisville’s arts and cultural institutions for children and young adults to age 21. The Pass is valid from June 3 to Aug. 12 for one-time general admission at each of the participating institutions.
“The Cultural Pass is an incredible asset for our city,” said Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen. “Churchill Downs is proud to sponsor such an important endeavor that enriches our great city.”
“The Cultural Pass turns our world-class arts and cultural institutions into summer classrooms for our community’s children and families,” said Christen Boone, Fund for the Arts President and CEO. “Churchill Downs’ support has been remarkable as we work together to reduce barriers to the arts for every child, parent and citizen of our community.”
The 2017 Cultural Pass and Summer Reading materials are available now at any Louisville Free Public Library branch and any Metro Louisville Community Center.
Pass holders can register and track the progress of their Cultural Pass online at www.lfpl.org/culturalpass and are encouraged to visit as many venues as they are able during the summer. Children with 5 or more documented visits receive a Cultural Pass giveaway prize and will be entered into a drawing to win additional prizes, including a free stay at 21C Museum Hotel, tickets to area performances like The Christmas Carol at Actors Theatre or Louisville Ballet’s Nutcracker, family memberships to Bernheim Forest, the Frazier History Museum, Gheens Science Hall and Planetarium, and more.
“The Arts and Culture Alliance is delighted to once again participate in this program, providing access to our arts and cultural organizations for thousands of youth in our area,” said Kim Baker, President and CEO of the Kentucky Center, and Chair of the ACA Executive Committee. “Our participating members look forward to providing memorable experiences this summer as we work together to make our community a vibrant place to live, learn, work and play. We’re grateful to Churchill Downs, Fund for the Arts and Louisville Metro for this unique opportunity.”
To learn more about the Cultural Pass, please visit www.fundforthearts.org/2017culturalpass.
