Jonathan Smith is a Santa Barbara man with plans to fly on a “magic carpet” adventure to bring artistic projections to those who need them. Smith is the Santa Barbara representative artist and volunteer for the mobile Flying Carpet Children Festival in Turkey, where refugee children can escape to a different world, even if just for an evening.
In Santa Barbara, Smith runs The Environment Makers Inc. corporation with his business and life partner Kym Cochran, who is also a theming artist in her own right. They focus primarily on lighting and projection projects around town, such as a historical projection inside the chapel at El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park, a nature projection inside the Sea Center on Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara, and another historical projection at the Old Santa Barbara Mission Museum, which are all on permanent display. All of their creative endeavors are educational or aim to bring the community closer together. Smith is bringing this same bridging energy on his trip across the globe to the Flying Carpet Children Festival.
“Every year, the Flying Carpet Children Festival gathers and hosts around 40-50 composers, performers, circus artists, dancers, multidisciplinary artists, and designers to create the most magical experience possible through a two-week residency in the city of Mardin,” the festival’s website says. They travel from cities to villages in Southeast Turkey to share their performance art with the children there. Smith is one of the collective’s 58 artists and volunteers from 24 countries selected to put the show together.
In preparation, Smith is working online with other specialized artists to put a show together that blends performance and his projections. “I’m basically learning how to animate so that I can project things onto a screen, which is going to go behind all the performers. Part of what we’re doing will be telling part of the storyline at certain points and at other points, it will be a backdrop.” Smith will be present for all performances, operating and adjusting projections in real time.
This year’s theme is the beloved children’s book, The Little Prince. “If you look at the underlying message of The Little Prince, it’s that children tend to look at the quality of things, and adults tend to look at the quantity of things, and I think that is what is happening with this festival. It’s not about quantity; it’s about the quality of having fun, the quality of giving, and the quality of enjoying oneself,” Smith said.
Smith planned to visit Istanbul before flying to Mardin on August 20. “We do rehearsals on the 21 and 22, and then we start a string of shows. I think it’s nine shows in a row, every single day. One of them, the last one, is a jam night where we can do whatever we want. But the first night is in the town of Mardin, which is within a few kilometers of the Syrian border,” Smith said. The festival runs from August 21-September 1.
“Every day, we will go to a different village, set up, and then do a show every single night. Apparently, there will be thousands of kids there for each of these nights. This is a big deal for them, and in many cases, they are from very disparate communities. It’s like ‘this one over here may be Syrian,’ ‘this one is Kurdish,’ ‘this one is Turkish,’ and ‘this one is Arabic.’ The entire show will be done in Turkish,” Smith said.
There will be a circus performing based in Mardin that includes children as well: the Sirkhane Social Circus School. “There’s going to be juggling, there’s going to be aerial, and there’s going to be fire performances,” Smith said. “A lot of the kids are refugee kids from all the wars and the devastation that has been going on over there, and so a lot of the kids in these different villages will be the refugee kids. This is a way to give them something really cool to do.”
“It’s about bringing something to the kids, making their lives richer across the board, and it’s about all these artists coming together to make everybody’s life, including their own, richer as well,” Smith said. “This is a challenge. This is unlike anything I’ve ever done, and I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again. I’m really, really looking forward to seeing how this functions.”
Keep up with Smith’s adventure by following The Environment Makers Inc. Instagram @environmentmakers. Smith encourages readers to donate to the festival to help heal the effects of war in the Middle East at flyingcarpetfestival.org/donate.
