For many students in the Yampa Valley, a field trip to the Strings Music Festival has become an anticipated learning and imagination-based part of the school year.

Through its Strings School Days program, the organization reaches more than 3,500 students annually with live performances that blend music, storytelling and creativity, all of which is provided at no cost to schools or families.

That tradition continues with “BUGS,” an engaging multimedia performance that will be presented Nov. 5-7 at Strings. Designed for kindergarten through fifth-grade students, the show combines live guitar, projection mapping and interactive storytelling to bring the hidden world of insects to life.

For some students, a field trip to Strings might mark their first live concert attendance. Director of Programs Katie Carroll said that moment of discovery and connectedness with the performing arts is at the heart of what Strings hopes to achieve.

“Our goals are really to help broaden horizons and inspire enthusiasm for what students are learning in school in a new way,” Carroll said. “We’re always looking for things that present familiar music in new and unfamiliar ways for kids.”

The artist behind “BUGS” is the award-winning guitarist Kaki King, who is known for her performances that fuse intricate on-stage projections with her guitar playing. The result is what Carroll described as a moving canvas of digital art, original compositions and video footage of real insects.

For audiences, all those elements combine to reveal connections between humans and the natural world.

King collaborated with the Brooklyn-based multimedia theater company Glitch to create the show.

“This show is at such a high level artistically,” she said. “It brings together music, techno tracks, digital projections and science in a way that’s engaging and beautiful. It’s exactly the kind of thing we hope to do with our education program.”

This year also marks a first for Strings, as King will spend five days in Steamboat Springs instead of a one-stop performance in the midst of a national tour. The result, according to Carroll, transforms the experience into a sort of residency.

“That gave us the chance to do more than just the school performances,” Carroll said. “She’ll perform for preschoolers, kindergarteners, first- and second-graders and she’ll also visit Steamboat Mountain School to talk with high school students about the creative and technical work behind the show.”

The extended stay also allows Strings to present a family-friendly performance on at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 7, which is open to all ages and will give parents a chance to experience what their children saw during their field trips.

Carroll said she hopes this deeper integration between school programming and family events will strengthen the festival’s connection with the community.

“It’s exciting to think about how that connection might resonate with parents and kids,” she said.

Bringing “BUGS” to life is no small task. The show relies on multiple projection surfaces, including one mapped precisely to the contours of King’s guitar, and setting up the display can take up to 15 hours over two days.

“There are three projection screens behind her, and then projections directly on her guitar,” Carroll said. “Our crew will spend at least 15 hours making sure that all of the projections correctly display on her guitar and behind her at the same time with the right light in the room.”

Because the Strings Pavilion is filled with natural light, even preparing the space required creative thinking and technical tweaks.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to make the pavilion as dark as possible,” Carroll said. “It’s primarily a room of windows, so making sure it’s dark enough during the day for the projections to be clear has been a fun challenge.”

Despite the complexity, she said the effort is worth it.

“We’ve done other shows that use projected sets, but this one is different because there are two images projected at two different depths,” Carroll said. “It’s really unique to Kaki. Every venue she visits will have to spend this amount of time to make sure it’s just right.”

Part of what excites Carroll about “BUGS” is how it continues Strings’ commitment to broaden what students experience through the music-based school outreach programming.

“We present our field trips in grade groups, so I try to think about what a child will see each year during a three-year cycle,” she said. “It’s about giving them different kinds of entertainment and art. One year it might be bilingual music, another year reggae and this year it’s single guitar with techno tracks and video production. The goal is to diversify the medium so students see the range of what performance can be.”

She added that the ultimate goal is to help children connect with subjects beyond the arts. For Carroll and the staff at Strings, Kaki’s performance is a vital step forward in the broader mission to reach as many Yampa Valley youth as possible in new and exciting ways.

“BUGS really leans into the science of the world around us and how we connect with it,” she said. “It’s a fun way for kids to think differently about art and science and how those things come together in their own world.”

For Strings, the success of its education programs depends on more than just high-quality performing arts and events – it depends on making access easy. The festival works directly with school districts to remove barriers, and they even reimburse transportation costs for some trips to reduce the cost and promote equity and inclusion.

“It has to be easy for teachers and administrators to say yes,” Carroll said. “There’s no charge for schools, and the districts invoice us for their busing costs. We pay for the school buses and we pay the artists, so there’s no fundraising teachers have to do. Everything is covered.”

Each performance also comes with a standards-based study guide created by Strings staff, which is distributed before the event. The guides help teachers connect what students will see on stage to lessons in science, language arts and social-emotional learning.

“The experiences align with the curriculum,” Carroll said. “There are opportunities for students to practice social-emotional competencies like following directions, using self-control and working together in new environments. But there’s also the academic side in understanding the content of the show and how it connects to classroom standards.”

Carroll said feedback from teachers plays an important role in shaping future programs.

After each Strings School Days event, educators are asked to complete short surveys about what their students learned and how the experience supported classroom goals.

“We want to know if students are asking questions, if they’re curious about what they experienced and if they’re making connections to their everyday lives,” Carroll said. “We also want to know if they’re using kind and inclusive words when they talk about it.”

In order to determine the overall impact on families and the bond that they feel during a given performance, the feedback is more informal but just as powerful.

“We look for families sitting together and engaging with the performance together,” Carroll said.

For the “BUGS” show, Strings will partner with Yampatika, which will host an insect zoo demonstration before the concert begins. Such partnerships, according to Carroll, are another way that Strings ties learning, community and creativity together under one roof with the help of local nonprofits and businesses.

In the end, Carroll said, the program is about much more than introducing children to music — it’s about giving them a way to see the world differently.

“BUGS may seem like a funny topic for a concert, but it’s about connection,” she said. “It’s about science, art and imagination coming together. And, if a child walks away curious about what they saw and wanting to learn more, then we’ve done our job.”