Kidz Earth Day Celebrates the Planet at Rosewood in Topanga
The Klemp children playing in The Ukelele Revival. Photo by Urs Baur
Source:Kidz Earth Day Celebrates the Planet at Rosewood in Topanga
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Earth Day this year was celebrated with a twist.
With sponsorship by Messenger Mountain News, Rosewood in Topanga and KidzMusic, Inc., Kidz Earth Day was reconfigured as a family-friendly event with a focus on children, celebrating Mother Earth, sustainable living and building eco-awareness in the next generation.
The Messenger Mountain News inherited the project when Bonnie Morgan brought in her client, KidzMusic, Inc., and their long-held plans to have their first “Kidz Music Fest” in Topanga Canyon on Earth Day.
Rosewood/CoLab, still under construction, conducted its first test for how community arts and music events could successfully take place in this smaller venue. Colorful bouncy houses stood amid white pavilions (offices ready to rent), and a “grass-green road” traversed the center of the parking area. The vibe was warm, the energy high with children squealing in the bouncy house and running freely while entertainment took place, in turn, on two hand-built stages.
Professional children’s music artists Dan Crow, Dave Kinnoin, Hap Palmer, Katherine Dines, Peter Alsop and Stephen Michael Schwartz played alternately with local groups such as Skye Rose, Topanga Ukelele Revival and Miss Lexi of LoveBug & Me.
Local activist dance troupe, Move the World, wowed the crowd with compelling performances about the scourge of plastic bags and caring for the earth and Melanie Kareem’s young, and we mean young, belly dancers dipped and swayed to the beat. It was divine poetry in motion.
All sorts of hands-on interactive activities for children ranged from repurposing materials into finger puppets, planting milkweed seeds in origami newspaper pots for Monarch butterflies to feed on when they matured, and exploring tarantulas and holding “dead leaf” praying mantis. There was even a Virtual Reality Room (hosted by Topanga Film Institute) affording the kids a moment to don the headset and literally “paint” the room.
The highlight of the fair came with the arrival of six baby goats brought in by Karen Simer of Hire-a-Herd. Her 300-goat herd is hired out for weed and brush clearance; she was happy to bring her six-week old “kidz” in for a few hours to enjoy the rapturous attention of children and adults alike.
Another, earlier Earth Day Celebration at the Calabasas Green Expo took place on April 13. The City of Calabasas adopted a resolution in 2012 proclaiming the second Saturday of every April to be Earth Day/Green Expo. It was held at the Las Virgenes Creek site on Agoura Road and hosted exhibitors from all over L.A. County showing participants how to save money through efficiency while protecting the planet. The free event was attended by many animal and plant conservationists from Poison Free Malibu and mountain lion champion Beth Bergstrom.
