Ball State and Muncie residents can enjoy food, music and art at the first Art Walk, 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday on Walnut Street.
Brian Lough, executive director of Downtown Development Partnership, said the purpose is to encourage people to discover the galleries and restaurants downtown.
The Downtown Development Partnership, College of Fine Arts and the College of Architecture and Planning are coordinating the event.
The event includes the openings of the monthly exhibits in the four art galleries on or near of Walnut Street, Lough said.
People can also watch a raku demonstration, Bob Kzan, dean of the College of Fine Arts, said.
Raku is a ceramic art that involves a garbage can on fire, Kzan said.
Kzan said jazz, brass and vocal groups from the university, Muncie Central and Muncie South Side high schools will be performing, with a final performance at Vera Mae's at the end of the night.
The Muncie Urban Design Studio, a part of the College of Architecture and Planning, will be having its grand opening during Art Walk.
The studio will showcase works by professors and architecture students, said Michel Mounayar, assistant dean of the College of Architecture and Planning.
Exhibits include five river outlooks that a group of students designed for the Minnetrista Cultural Center, and affordable housing plans created by professor Anthony Costello, Mounayar said.
"We have been heavily involved to make downtown Muncie better," Mounayar said.
Students can also see more Muncie architecture in Upstairs Downtown, which allows them to go up to the second and third floors of six buildings on Walnut Street, Lough said.
Kzan said he would like to see a better relationship between the university and the community.
"Downtown is extremely close to us, but maybe the perceptual distance is harder to overcome," Mounayar said.
Another goal is to show residents the artistic side of downtown.
"There's a huge concentration of academic and professional artists in downtown, and I think we need to celebrate that," Mounayar said.
Mounayar said many people still think of downtown as banks and jewelry stores.
"Downtown's becoming more eclectic," Kzan said.
Mounayar said he also wants to improve impressions of downtown.
"When you have visitors to your community, the first place you take them is downtown," he said. "The vitality is important."
Though this is the first year for the program in Muncie, the university has offered it to alumni in Indianapolis on Massachusetts Avenue for the past two years, Kzan said.
Kzan said if it rains, everything will move inside.
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