Deep inside the interior hallways of Lake Braddock Secondary School, roughly 20 students are hard at work on a July afternoon putting buttercream rosettes on layer cakes. In the auditorium, about five corridors away, a smaller group of students are slashing and leaping in choreographed steps with dull-edged swords on the school’s stage.

All the teenagers are part of Fairfax County Public Schools annual Institute for the Arts, a summer program that encourages kids – even those not enrolled in FCPS – to explore subjects like “Modern Buttercream Techniques” or “Stage Combat” that either aren’t traditionally offered during the school year or may not fit into a student’s academic scheduling needs.

Buttercream techniques student Makayla Storr, a rising freshman at W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, says she was drawn to the program for the ability to explore.

 

“This class has a lot of freedom,” Makayla says. “Most other classes have projects that must be done in a certain way, you have to do exactly as you are told, but in this class you are free to do things however you want, the whole point is to push us to be creative.”

For rising Woodson sophomore Ally Boylan, she was intrigued by the social aspects of cake decorating, and finding an environment to experiment with new skills, while laughing about setbacks like “sweaty” cakes that are too moist to properly frost.

“This class lends itself to chatting – we commiserate about ‘Oh no, my cake is all sweaty,’ or ‘Wow your cake looks so cool how did you do that?,’” Ally says. “After two years of a pandemic, it is so nice to be in a classroom that is so lively and everyone is so friendly.”

 

Julian Budden, a rising junior at Robinson Secondary School, says the decision to enroll in the buttercream course is even more simple: “I mean it’s cake. Free cake.”

Buttercream students take home a completed cake at the end of each week to share with friends and family.

Julian’s day-to-day experience during the IFTA program involves rotating between four courses: painting, stage combat, figure drawing and then buttercream class.

“These are all things I find very interesting,” Julian says. “And there is basically no opportunity to explore them during the regular year.”

Kara Drinkwater, the fine arts projects educational specialist who oversees both the IFTA program and an elementary version of the same summer session, says that is what she hopes to achieve with the summer opportunities.

“Kids can come and really get the chance to pick what they want to do and explore which is awesome. If they’ve never taken piano but they want to try piano--they can, things like stage combat, they’re not available in their regular school schedules,” Drinkwater says. “They might have ceramics in their building but no room in their schedule to do that so they come here to get that experience.”

Annalise Grindstaff, a rising junior at West Potomac High School, says she was originally drawn to the program in 2019 to explore stage combat, but while attending, also picked up guitar.

 

“It gives us something productive to do over the summer, I know I would mainly be sitting inside doing not much,” Annalise said. “This is a really nice way to get exercise, I would much rather come here and sword fight for an hour and a half than go for a run.”

Annalise praised the FCPS program for opening students' eyes to new activities and making often-expensive, niche activities available to all.

“It is way more accessible – taking a stage combat course outside of here is almost impossible and would probably cost hundreds of dollars, where this makes it so much easier for kids to get into things they would never have known about before,” Annalise said. “I had no interest in fashion design, for example, but I signed up for the class and now I love it.”

 

IFTA Director Drinkwater says that’s a common refrain she hears from students and parents alike.

“Maybe those kids in the Buttercream class, down the road will decorate cakes for a living, sell cakes and they will say I got those skills first at IFTA and it stuck with me as something that I love,”  Drinkwater muses. “I have actually had parents email me to say, when I was my child’s age, I came to IFTA, I took a computer graphics class and now I’m a designer. This exposure during the summer is paramount for kids to really get a chance to experience something that they might never do during the school year. We are creating future professionals here.”