Springtime concert and festival UCensation featured local music groups, food, a chalk art competition and the Ice Skating Club’s quarterly ice-blocking event yesterday afternoon at the Lagoon Lawn.

Hosted by the University Center, A.S. Program Board and several other campus organizations, the festival began with a performance by local band The Fire Department, and was followed by performances from DJ T-Fresh and DJ Erah. Vitamin Water, Santa Barbara Bars and Dirty Chips provided free snacks while UCen Catering Service sold food items, such as hot dogs, for $2 each. Various UCen organizations also pitched in to provide an airbrush tattoo stand and a photo booth

A.S. lined up the music, UC Dining lined up vendors, the MultiCultural Center ran the chalk art competition and the UCSB Athletics Department ran the soccer and basketball games and showcased a blowup Gaucho mascot. The UCSB Bookstore, UCen administration, and student service managers also helped plan and organize the event.

UCen Interim Director of Administration Gary Lawrence said the event is the final installment of a planned series of quarterly events hosted by the UCen.

“We’re trying each quarter to do one big event, so in the winter we did ice skating … and then we’re going to come up with one for the fall,” Lawrence said. “In the past, we used to do a lot of events, but budgets got bad and it was tougher to do things … so we decided this year to get back to doing some fun things.”

Ice Skating Club President Sarah Feldman, fourth-year computer science major, said although the Ice Skating Club already hosted its quarterly ice-blocking event earlier this spring, the club was eager to host another event as part of UCensation. After collaborating with the UCen to bring a synthetic ice skating ring to Corwin Pavilion during Winter Quarter, the group was excited to work with the UCen again, according to Feldman.

“Earlier this quarter, we had … maybe even 200 students, which is pretty fantastic. Today, I’d say we’ve had probably double that, easily,” Feldman said. “We’re excited to have been able to work with University Center on this.”

According to Lawrence, the goal of UCensation was to provide a fun experience for students by combining the efforts of several organizations, and he said he hopes to publicize the event even further in the future.

“We tried to get everybody in the building involved in some way … we’ll probably get together with some students to get some feedback to see what we might be able to do for Fall Quarter,” Lawrence said. “I think we’ll try to make it bigger and better next time.”

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