A staple of the Hockaday community since 1970, Ed Long has become part of the identity of the school itself. Few members of the community are unfamiliar with Long’s contributions to campus, including his development of the History of Art and Music course as well as his leadership of the Upper School orchestra. However, during his 47-year-long tenure, Long has accomplished far more than most students know.
In his last year before retirement, The Fourcast shares a Long story every issue.
As spring is in full bloom the biggest Independent Schools of the Southwest Arts Festival that has ever occurred approaches.
Long has overseen Hockaday’s participation in ISAS ever since the school first started taking part in the festival in 1974, seven years after the festival first started in 1967. Long shares the differences he has noticed between the festivals over the years.
According to Long, Hockaday has hosted the ISAS arts festival once every decade since Hockaday first began taking part in the event.
The school first hosted the ISAS arts festival in 1974, when only around three-hundred students were in attendance. Now, over four-thousand students attend the annual festival.
“Its gone from eight schools to 43 schools,” Long said.
Along with the increase in the participants, ISAS has also seen the expansion of the venue.
“It went from a festival where you could see every single event from each school and you had effectively a chance to see everything each school had brought to twenty-one separate venues all happening simultaneously,” Long said.
This means that a person is only able to see less than one twentieth of the festival.
This year, there will be over 600 different events offered at the festival plus reviews, portfolios and workshops.
In addition to these two big changes, the festival has also undergone an extreme transformation in the technology aspect of it over the years.
“You have to realize that back when we started there wasn’t even so much as a copy machine to organize the festival and now we have several interesting software availabilities like Guidebook, a phone app that everyone will have. It was hard to dream in 1970 that everybody would have the Guidebook on their phone which they now will,” Long said.
