Tag Archives: arts education

Dance and Culture

Make a New Year’s Resolution That Matters: Support the Arts in 2014!

Leave a comment

It’s that time of year again.  Time for throwing out the cigarettes, getting a gym membership, and going for one last binge of all the chocolate in the house so that you can start the new year right.

This year, instead of making a New Year’s resolution that you probably won’t enjoy (because no matter how much you say you want to eat healthily, it’s no fun saying no to cookies), why not try something that enriches your mind and keeps the arts alive?

This year, why not make it your New Year’s resolution to support the arts?

Saying that the arts are the first to go in times of economic hardship is so cliché, you almost don’t need the statistics to paint how hard it is for theaters to survive in today’s cultural climate (but don’t worry; I have the numbers to prove it, too).

Closed Theater - National Theater
We lose more than just the performers without support. The National Theater was built in 1911 and is a registered historic building, but has fallen into disrepair.

First Lady Michelle Obama believes that “our artists challenge our assumptions in ways that many cannot and do not. They expand our understandings, and push us to view our world in new and very unexpected ways…. It is a form of diplomacy in which we can all take part.”  History proves her point. The first African American musical performed on Broadway in 1898, almost 60 years before the first integrated public schools.  The first gay actor came out in 1933, 75 years before  California legalized gay marriage.

But not all government officials believe in the power of the arts.  It’s strange that the arts budgets are cut first, particularly by as they generate $9.59 billion annually in federal tax income alone, and pump in over $60 million into the economy each year.  In comparison, a proposed spending reduction act in 2011 that threatened to eliminate funding to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would save $167.5 million a year—a mere fraction of what the arts brings in.

Arts for Humanity
Arts education has shown that test scores can jump 20-22% in Math and English in elementary and middle school students.

And the trouble with the arts doesn’t stop and start with theaters.  Over the past ten years, elementary schools offering performing and visual arts opportunities dropped from 20% to 3-4%.    This is a critical time to begin learning, as students who study music consistently outperform (literally) their counterparts in math and science national tests, and arts students are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement.

There are so many ways to support the arts, and each one plays a vital role in the health of the arts.  I’m not saying you have to go out and donate your entire life savings to your local theater.  But theater is about building communities–and we can’t do that if you don’t click out of the YouTube videos, change out of your pajamas, and meet us halfway.

See community theater. See professional theater.  Go to an art exhibit.  Help the local school paint their sets for their show.  Give a gift basket for a theater’s fundraiser.  Skip Starbucks for a week and donate the money you saved to a theater.  Support the arts.  You’ll be fulfilling your New Year’s resolution to cut back on coffee, and supporting institutions that build stronger, more open-minded communities…and that’s a New Year’s resolution that will last far beyond 2014.

 

Photo credit: http://afterthefinalcurtain.net/2013/01/24/the-national-theatre/, http://www.artsforhumanity.com/about-us/funding/

Stretch - Donate

 

I Have Lived 1000 Years

Teaching A Thousand Years in 90 Minutes or Less

Leave a comment

Last week, this video popped up in my Facebook newsfeed, showing college kids being asked questions about the Holocaust…and being unable to answer them.

Now I don’t expect people to be experts on the subject matter—I’m certainly not one myself—but some of these kids couldn’t even answer name which country Adolf Hitler led during WWII.  Another student thought that WWII was waged 300 years ago!

Stretch - Calista FaceThis is a critical gap in our education system.  In past blogs I’ve explored how ignorance and indifference fueled the Holocaust grow from one extremist party to a world war, and the danger lurks not just in the past, but in the present.  When we hide ignorance and hate, or ignore its potency, we give it room to grow untended.  We cannot prevent the Holocaust in 2013, but we can use the knowledge gained from the experience to combat genocide today.

The video makes an excellent point that these students are not to blame for their ignorance, but their lack of education.  As a teacher’s daughter, I know just how that time is almost as tight as money in public schools.  But I also know that the responsibility of education does not fall solely on the shoulders of the teachers themselves, but on each and every member of the community.

This particularly applies to the arts. I’m sure we’ve all heard about arts funding being the first to go in budget cuts, and I’ve heard many debate about the usefulness about the arts and humanities at all.  Shouldn’t we have more doctors, more engineers, more teachers!

The answer is yes, of course!  But we also have a vital need for those who can see the whole story, and tell it to the engineers, Stretch - teachingthe doctors, the teachers, the lawyers.  Armed with that information, they can do their work that much better.  But how can a doctor treat a wound they don’t know about?

This is why I Have Lived a Thousand Years and other educational projects from outside of schools are so vital.  We can provide vital support to our struggling schools and give direction to the students of tomorrow, whether they want to be dancer or a doctor.

It doesn’t take much to made a difference. A 90 minute show can be the introduction of a new generation to a brighter future.