I have enjoyed several performances at the Grand Theatre Center for the Arts. It is a nice facility to have in our city.
However, $1 million a year coming from the city for the benefit of a few doesn’t feel quite right at a time when our financial status is not good.
The Grand is there for all of Tracy to enjoy, but a large percentage of our residents cannot afford to attend the performances or the lessons provided. The performances we have attended were not even half full, which would seem to confirm my statement about affordability.
Before funding the Grand, not one police officer or firefighter, nor their hours or equipment, should be cut.
With people losing jobs and needing money, crime will no doubt increase, and we will need to add to the police force.
Also, I believe city parks should be maintained, as well as our city’s landscaping. Another item that needs to be funded first, and probably increased, is Tracy Interfaith Ministries. As more and more people are out of work and hungry, this becomes crucial.
These are only a few budget items that should come before funding nonessentials that not everyone can afford or wants to have. Let’s put first things first!
• Editor’s Note: Tracy Interfaith Ministries is a nonprofit charitable organization that is separate from the city of Tracy.
However, For the blogger known as "why?",
The article doesn't mention "Socialism", and I don't think the city plans to tear the building down ???
???
We do have the problem of how to fund the programs; whether we are talking about The Grand, or anything else. There is no easy solution here, but if we want a program we should be willing to pay for it and not expect it to "magically" be funded by our governments, local or otherwise. The money has to come from somewhere, and if we spend most of it to put it on a ballot, then have it administered by a government; most of it will never make it to the intended recipient. So, vote with your pocket book and support the arts, or whatever you prefer, directly. Show your support, be visible and vocal in doing so, be an instrument of the change you want to see in your community. Get up, get out, get going. Actions speak louder than words, no matter how erudite.
Dvod
You listed a lot of info and I commend you for that. How many of those programs receive tax dollars? How many children are helped via the Boys and Girls Club? How many children at the theatre? How much per child at each place? Which is better? If you had to choose between the two, which would you choose and why. Should we fund them all? Should we fund only a few? Should we fund none of them? Should we cut the funding to each a certain percentage? Which ones have we been funding the longest?
I'll throw you a bone. I think it would be better to cut staff and use the money to fund these programs. Will the city cut the way they should. Probably not.
The thing is, we can't have it all. The city is blowing through our savings like there is no tomorrow. I think they will patch together something this year, trying to please all the special interests (yes, that includes the theatre) and then next year is going to come crashing down on them even worse. They need to make the tough decisions we elected them to make.
Like the pattern on the curtains? Someone came up with the design using materials to create the curtains.
Like how your furniture looks, someone designed them... if you look around, you'd be surprised how an artist provides the pleasing art into the homes...
Like the fashion, patterns on the prints, pictures on the walls... list goes on
Landscaping... art, and engineering
I sponsor art and find that without appreciating art, is like appreciating night sky without stars, ever???
I also paint, love to paint the sea and sky!
In fact, there are numerous sources over the past 20 years in print, white papers and online. Here's a quick sampling to answer the charge that anything in this conversation has been a "scare tactic." The research and results documenting the arts as an effective tool in social development and crime prevention in youth is well presented.
Topics:
After School Arts Education Programs
Arts and Social Development
At Risk Youth
Boys and Girls Clubs
Graffiti
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
National Crime Prevention
Parks and Recreation
Sources:
http://www.americansforthearts.org
http://www.americansforthearts.org/youtharts
http://www.ed.gov
http://www.fbi.gov
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/
http://www.ncpc.org/
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Though a few programs have existed since the 1970s, it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that many communities started to assimilate art programs within at-risk youth rehabilitation programs and correctional facilities. The results have proved promising, and within the past 10 or so years, hundreds of innovative media and arts programs have developed. These programs provide: opportunities to learn tangible skills, environments for communication, and therapeutic outlets for at-risk youth and inmates. As the students of such programs begin to express themselves through the arts, communities and institutions gain a deeper understanding of the issues contributing to crime and delinquency.
Most programs focus specifically on juvenile crime; however, some bridge the gap between adult, long-term prisoners and at-risk youth, providing an opportunity for the adults to educate the youth. There is a growing trend toward using the arts with at-risk youth before they reach prison. Successful art programs tend not to be just therapeutic, but also educational (i.e., teaching students how to write or paint). Other successful programs may be collaborations between multiple organizations within a single community (i.e., between an arts organization, rehabilitation service, correctional facility, and social service agency).
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Arts programs designed for underserved youth have proven to be powerful and effective crime prevention tools. An increasing number of community-based organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, youth museums, libraries, and parks and recreation departments are using arts programs to reduce risky behaviors and build critical self-discipline, communication, and job skills. Effective programs designed for at-risk youth contain activities that are designed to reduce the influence of risk factors by providing opportunities for youth to learn new skills and build self-esteem.
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The Youth ARTS Development Project was a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; National Endowment for the Arts; Americans for the Arts; and local arts agencies in Portland, OR; Atlanta, GA; and San Antonio, TX.
The project entailed a national research and demonstration study in which arts programs for at-risk youth in three cities were evaluated for their effectiveness by researchers provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The findings of the controlled evaluations revealed that at-risk youth given opportunities in the arts showed:
* Increased ability to communicate effectively
* Improved ability to work on tasks from start to finish
* Improved attitudes toward school
* Decreased frequency of delinquent behavior and court referrals.
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The Arts and After-School Programs
Background. Research shows that the arts help children build both basic and advanced thinking skills, and instruct children in diverse modes of thinking and learning. The knowledge and skills that students develop in learning to respond to, perform and create works of arts constitute a fundamental form of literacy students must have if they are to communicate successfully and function in todays new media and information society.
A quality arts education can help students develop the four C's:
* Cognition: The arts expand our knowledge and contribute to intellectual comprehension. Studies have shown that the arts teach children how to think critically, solve problems, analyze and synthesize information, evaluate and make decisions.
* Culture: The arts help us understand people and the traditions and symbols that have meaning for them. The arts are international and transcend the limits of different languages, and help to bridge the gaps in a diverse and complicated world.
* Communication: The arts help us send and receive messages in a variety of media that are their own form of literacy. The arts use sights, sounds, and movement to convey meaning beyond the power of words. Arts education develops the ability to interpret and understand complex symbols in the same manner as language and mathematics.
* Creativity: The arts teach the skills associated with imagination, invention and innovation-skills. Creativity learned through the arts is linked to the processes of scientific discovery, business planning and negotiation.
Because an arts education develops a diverse range of cognitive abilities, it helps teachers promote achievement across disciplines, as well as in an arts discipline, fostering the development of spatial, mathematical, logical and physical abilities.
How to integrate the arts into after-school programs. The goal of many communities is to have every student have the opportunity to learn about art, music, and drama in the elementary, middle, and high school years, which is very much in line with the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program?s goals of providing a variety of academic and enrichment activities to students and parents in the communities which they serve. Examples of how your Center can help include:
* Providing after-school opportunity in dance, music, theater and the visual arts;
* Integrating the arts into math, science, history and other after-school subjects;
* Supporting artist-teacher collaborations in and outside the school with cultural groups such as museums, libraries, poetry, and visual arts community groups and in-school residencies of artists, musicians, theater performers, writers and museum curators; and
* Encouraging parental involvement in the production and planning of student dance, musical and theatrical performances, as well as field trips to local museums.
The arts education community has several existing community partnerships that successfully blend the community resources of local museums, theaters, symphonies, dance troupes and arts programs with before- and after-school programming. Some examples of successful community partnerships include: The Atlanta Historical Centers partnership with the Boys and Girls Club in Atlanta, Georgia; the Flint Cultural Center, comprising eight cultural organizations including a museum and concert hall, and its partnerships with the Flint, Michigan community; and the Please Touch Me Museum, the only museum designed for children ages one to seven, and its partnerships with more than 20 community organizations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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In November 2002, Ann Johnson founded the House of David, a non-profit youth outreach organization that promotes educational programs for at-risk children between the ages of 6 and 16. The targeted groups for these programs are the Latino and African-American communities. These programs not only reach at-risk youth by offering them alternatives to inappropriate activities, including education regarding the use of the Internet, but they touch parents as well. Ms. Johnson’s programs include educational tools to deter inappropriate language, violence, sex, and alcohol and drug abuse. Ms. Johnson accomplishes her goals by creating programs designed to train and promote the cultural arts through singing and dancing.
Through her initiatives, Ms. Johnson seeks to positively influence at-risk youth, who for the most part live in communities affected by high levels of gang violence and low literacy rates and broken homes. Ms. Johnson’s initiatives offer positive alternatives to these young men and women by exposing them to career choices and educational opportunities that will prepare them to become productive members of society.
Priorities gets lost in the society,however, it will not affect those who were trained well by their parents as I was.
Have always paid in cash, refused to let any credit card company have any ownership on my wallet.
Too bad USA couldn't do the same with China.
If we couldn't pay back, then what??
I blame complacency in the people, passivity, apathy, oblivious to their own elected officials function, placing too much faith in their elected people... should have kept an eye on those people as you would keep an eye on your bank handling your account?
Times are going to be far more tougher for young adults, what jobs are there, how could they buy their own homes and so on....seeing they have to pay their "parents'" frivolous debts!
So no wonder our govie is a mess. Same people who couldn't manage money gets voted into the office...
Don't use bad parenting as an excuse.
Back to the issue.
I'm not cranky. I'm sick of people not facing up to the financial problems that we have at every level of Gov't. Everyone wants something on the public dime. To many people think that the gov't is the piggy bank. It's that thinking that has brought on the overspending.
Don't you realize that the piggy bank is us and we are broke.
If you have extra funds then donate them to whatever charity you choose.
"Bored and out on the streets. I spent my entire youth outdoors, on the streets, in the parks, at the school and I turned out pretty well."
What decade?
Peer pressure gets far worse each decade.
I would say the last two decade has been unfriendly to the teens... more bold and dangerous.. even teens are hired to be hitmen!!
So if you speak of the 50's, that would be true, my parents said those were the most "friendly" times they could remember...
No bullying, gangs, drugs with horrible consequences...
My parents turned out superb, too.
My decade, is different, didn't have cellphones, text messaging, meth, crack, gangs, but did have teen pregnancies in high schools... my parents said they never saw a pregnant teen in their high school, there were stigmas placed on unwed mothers with babies at their time...
Each decade is different and produce different mind set of people? No?
Board it up. Like that's going to happen. With dedicated people like DVod, I'm sure you can raise private funds to keep it open. If not, well then it must not be very important to you.
The idea of lowering crime rates. Please post your link to the facts.
Bored and out on the streets. I spent my entire youth outdoors, on the streets, in the parks, at the school and I turned out pretty well. So you need public funds to unbore kids. Sounds like a liberal idea. Libs have screwed up this state but it sounds like you want the status quo and your cut of the pie. What a simplistic idea.
iching
The city has wised up, seen their mistake (for once, and only because of financial reasons) and realized that the theatre should have been a private enterprise all along. How does the city see this as a failure?
1.The director of parks went public to the director of a local non profit organization last week with the information that the city intends to contract out the operations of the grand theatre to a venue management corporation and cut programs, this is the person that the city Manager has chosen to run the day to day operation of the facility , so one must assume that he speaks with the full confidence and authority of the City Managers office.
2. If I am not mistaken city council voted that the operations of the Grand Theatre, arts and culture would be placed under the office of the city Manager and Not Parks, further evidence that this office doesn't care what council Says.
The perception created is that the only real concern in that office is to move the Grand Theatre off of the city ledger.
they see the twenty million dollars of tax payers money spent on this project and the downtown revitalization as a burden and a failure and like people and organizations that fail at the first sign of hardship they cut their losses and run away.
I stood in front of the Grand Theatre two years ago and listened to the Mayor call it the key stone of the downtown revitalization.Now we hear the politics of fear, what we need are more guns on the streets to control crime, maybe what we need is more arts education and after school programs to keep Kids out gangs and crime.Maybe we should make an investment in the future of our community and make it a place where people will want to live and raise their children or maybe we should board up the grand theatre again, raze the downtown area build a super Wal-Mart and a NASCAR track,with all that money we could afford more police officers and guns than anybody.
As I understand it, the Grand isn't as new (as in just added when times were good) as people think. The ALA group started working on this about 15 years ago and the city committed to it around 10 years ago. Lots of studies and surveys were done and the community and the school district came together with the city to design the Grand as an important resource.
From what I've been able to read, and through talking to lots of the people who worked on the plan and gave money and spend money in downtown, the Grand was built for a few essential reasons: quality of life, to offer arts education that the schools can not, and as a major part of the downtown redevelopment. I've even spoken to some downtown business owners who say without the Grand, they'd have closed up shop a long time ago. There are thousands of people spending money at the Grand and in downtown Tracy. Without it, that money will go somewhere else, but it won't be in Tracy.
To me and lots of other people who feel that it's the amenities (arts, parks, libraries, schools, affordable housing, business diversity) of a community that makes it special, a place you want to live and raise a family, a place that will attract new businesses and help keep others, a place where there are positive options for kids, the art center seems very essential.
Even the FBI has documented that arts programs lower crime rates among youth. If you really think crime is on the rise in Tracy, you need the Grand more than ever.
Who wants to live in a city with little or no arts or entertainment?
Who wants all our kids bored and out on the streets?
What business wants to move to a city that has a low quality of life?
Be proud of and protect the good things you have. What takes years to build can be destroyed in moments. It really is OK for our taxes to used for something positive for a change.