A boom of student creativity channels endearing optimism and rising talent.

It’s the time of year when the academic grind of school shifts into graduation ceremonies, prom dances and summer camps. But not before the county’s students get a chance to show you what they’ve learned.

Hartnell College is strong in its alignment with STEM (science, technology, education, math) curriculum and resources. But their theater, arts and music programs are a force, too.

This Thursday, 7:30-9pm, the Hartnell College Community Orchestra’s 45 student members fill the school’s Main Stage for a free farewell (to the academic year) spring concert. And though, technically, the players are all local students, their ages range 11-year-olds to people in their 80s, and they come from everywhere from King City to Hollister. The concert is billed as To Italy and Beyond because it’s mostly Italian folk songs and operas.

That means the sumptuous “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (you’ll know it when you hear it) and the rousting “Anvil Chorus” from Guiseppe Verdi’s Il Trovotre. Conductor Steve Ettinger says that two of the pieces will be a tribute to late member Alison Passel, including an arrangement of her own composition, River Medley, and a movement from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, which is a beautiful and traditional symphonic in memoriam piece.

They’ll project images on a screen to go with the music, which should fill the comfy, wrap-around venue with more emotion.

In January, the Monterey Museum of Art-Pacific started an exhibition series in the upstairs gallery spaces devoted to work from the community. It began then withEvidence/Longevity/Celebration: Youth Arts Collective Alumni and Mentors. It continues with the Marti Mulford Youth Arts Exhibit presented by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monterey County, opening 6-8pm this Friday.

That exhibit began with visits to the museum by the kids as part of the Boys and Girls Clubs’ art and science curriculum. Ami Davis, the museum’s director of education and community partnerships, coordinated MMA’s part.

“We wanted to talk about artists in the region,” she says. “We looked at iconic masterpieces by artists [like] Armin Hansen and E. Charlton Fortune, and their career paths, and the careers of [staff] in the museum. What does it take to be an artist? An arts professional?”

This is a show of kids’ art, made by 35 members ages 6-18. It’s cute, colorful and whimsical, a refreshing wave of innocence to the gravity and confusion of the adult world. The kids will be at the opening, which Davis says will feel like a real art opening and be family friendly.

That’s a special moment that the youngsters are not likely to forget. And that can go a long way to building a longterm relationship in kids who may not have easy access to the cultural richness a museum offers. And you can be there at that convergence.

~ ~ ~

The Monterey Peninsula Student Film Festival takes its first tentative steps into the local film festival arena 7-9pm Wednesday, May 27, at Carmel High School’s Performing Arts Theater.

Its inaugural year is a collaboration among film and video teachers of four local high schools – Carmel, Monterey, Marina and Pacific Grove. It began as an in-house showcase at Carmel High’s film screening facility, but Brian Granbery, that school’s science and video productions teacher, found cause to expand it.

He borrowed from a San Jose event called the Social Issues Documentary Film Contest. Granbery made his students participate with a documentary on a vital issue or a nonprofit.

“It was very meaningful,” he says.

That festival folded, but not before proving its value and viability. The local teachers have recruited judges, including Mark Shelley formerly of Sea Studios, and local writer Shane Dallmann.

There is plenty of content. Granbery says they’ve tentatively slated the first 30 minutes for judges to talk, then the next hour and a half for the films themselves, in three categories. They’ll start with “open concept” films, including music videos, animation and other outliers; then documentaries; and close with narrative films with stories.

Elsewhere, CSU Monterey Bay students are gone for the summer. But the work of students from the Science Illustration program lingers at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, in the sixth annual Illustrating Nature exhibit.

About 50 pieces from 15 of the program’s students are showing in the big Heritage Gallery room, including studies of octopus and cuttlefish, night herons and ravens, minutely detailed and faithfully colored in the tradition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America.

Ann Caudle, senior program specialist, says it’s a real blend of science and art.

“The images are drawn from life if possible,” she says. “Also, from researching and image searching, taking existing photographs and re-articulating them.”

Students observed animals at Vision Quest Ranch, Monterey Bay Aquarium and Point Lobos. But they also studied skeletons and specimens from the P.G. Museum of Natural History and re-imagined the animals in new positions.

The work is available to see 10am-5pm Tuesday through Sunday, free, until June 14. At which time they, like the students, go away.