A gray-haired woman poses with a child in a school hallway.

Clonlara founder Pat Montgomery and then-eight-year-old student Louisa Beemsterboer at the first annual Clonlara Art Fair—which Beemsterboer organized as a Full Circle Learning project. | Courtesy of Clonlara School

At the 2024 Clonlara Art Market, organizer Louisa Beemsterboer met vendors at the entrance, clipboard and walkie-talkie in hand, and escorted them to their designated spots. All was going according to plan—until she brought one artist to a site that didn’t have a table.

“They said, ‘I thought I had a table here,’” Louisa recalls. She looked at her clipboard; it said nothing about a table, but the artist was insistent. “I looked at them again, and I grabbed my walkie-talkie, like, ‘Mark, we’re going to need a table at 37.’”

Situation handled, like a boss. By the way, Louisa was eight years old at the time.

Founder Pat Montgomery established Clonlara School in 1967 to “allow children to be themselves, free to explore their interests and develop into individuals who [feel] free in their own skin,” she told the Observer in 2017. Through what it calls Full Circle Learning (FCL), Clonlara empowers its students to pursue topics that spark their curiosity, and learn what they learn along the way.

Like the Clonlara Art Market. Louisa, who’s now nine years old and in fourth grade, seems comfortable with event planning. But art is her true passion.

“I really like to draw,” she declares. “It’s my favorite thing ever.”

After displaying her drawings as a vendor at a few children’s art fairs, she decided she’d like to start her own event. She proposed her idea to her teachers and was assigned a mentor—Kelly Brewer, director of admissions.

“She helped me turn the art market into a real thing,” Louisa says. “And we had to do a lot of stuff.”

Stuff like budgeting, designing a flyer and signs to advertise the event, and inviting vendors to participate—both students and adults. Louisa’s father, Mark (yes, the same Mark who brought the table to 37) works as a social studies and high school main room teacher at Clonlara. He says FCL taught Louisa about planning, interpersonal skills, organization, and keeping track of finances.

“She wasn’t just doing work. She’s not just studying for a test,” he says. “She’s learning all these real-world skills in the classroom.”

On the day of the Art Market, there were more than fifty booths; the event raised around $1,000 to support arts on campus.

“The actual day I was like, ‘I’m done. I did all that work!’” Louisa says with a satisfied little laugh. “‘Finally done.’”

That is, until earlier this year, when she organized the second annual Art Market. Featuring sixty vendors and a silent auction, the event raised over $2,800 for renovations to the campus playground and outdoor space.

The third annual Clonlara Art Market will be on April 11, 2026.