2025 Fantastic Hat Parade at KCAI

Name: 2025 Fantastic Hat Parade at KCAI
Start: 2025-09-12T10:00:00-05:00
Location: 4415 Warwick Blvd, Kansas City, MO, United States, Missouri 64111

Schedule

Fri, 12 Sep, 2025 at 10:00 am

UTC-05:00

Location

4415 Warwick Blvd, Kansas City, MO, United States, Missouri 64111 | Kansas City, KS

The public is warmly invited to witness The Fantastic Hat Parade. Participating students will set out from Vanderslice Hall at 10 a.m., heading toward Oak Street and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The parade will return to campus along East 45th Street, with Sophomore, Junior, and Senior students cheering their arrival at the campus green.
The Fantastic Hat Parade stands as a cherished KCAI tradition, a jubilant rite of passage that welcomes first-year Foundation students into the enduring lineage of the Kansas City Art Institute, an institution of creativity and learning since 1885.
Steve Snell, Associate Professor and Sosland Family Chair of Foundation Studies, explains that while the faculty affectionately refers to the works as ‘fantastic hats,’ the term is simply a playful entry point for what are, in truth, celebratory sculptural forms designed to be worn hands-free.
“But as long as it’s a paper-based material, it’s fair game. We don’t use metal or plastic. Instead, students work with packing paper, cardboard, paper mâché, glue, tape, anything paper-like is fair game. Cardboard, in particular, serves as the primary structural material that students use to engineer their creations,” Snell says.
The project frequently yields inventive, boundary-pushing creations, as students engage in three-dimensional work beyond the digital mediums where many feel most at home. The Foundation year at KCAI brings together all students, regardless of intended major, for a collective fellowship of creative exploration and The Fantastic Hat Parade plays a major role.
“A strong Foundation program is designed to open up possibilities, not just reinforce existing interests. We achieve this by challenging students with unexpected materials, innovative curriculum, and new problems, while giving them the skills to approach creative problem-solving,” Snell says.