Center for the Arts Community Forum tonight

Hi Arts Friends!

I wanted to take a minute to ask you all to make sure you seriously consider filling out the Center for the Arts Survey in the paper this week and attend the Center for the Arts meeting this Wednesday, July 22 from 7-9pm at the First Presbyterian Church, and help advocate for performance/art space needs in the community.

As the process for the Center for the Arts has moved forward, it has been very unsure if the Center would have the ability to provide a range of spaces for the performing arts, opting to focus mainly on a performing space. This meeting and the questionnaire are an opportunity to make a collective voice heard. Most people would look at a facility plan and assume if it has a stage and wings, it is providing the space resources for the performing arts. We in the performing arts know that is only the crown. To provide adequate programming, a vibrant center should have rehearsal studios, classrooms, and ideally set and costume build spaces and storage. And those spaces would serve the arts not just the performing arts. Even if one building doesn't have all those facility needs together, an overall facility plan included in the fundraising and endowment plan to provide for those spaces is critical. Those other spaces make it possible to meet the needs of youth programming, create a vibrant adult theatre, offer a full array of performing arts classes (music, vocal, theatre, dance) and create new programming in design. Just think about how these spaces could spin up a whole new variety of vibrant arts, including performing. With a plan and appropriate fundraising for these spaces, the Center for the Arts would be full of activity all the time, not just for performances. And the facilities to prepare those performances would be in place. It would give the performing and other arts a backbone that we have never had. We are a can do arts comunity that has made do with inadequate or partial facilities for too long. Burdened with always making do has probably cost us in ways we are not even aware of. How will we attract outside visitors or participants if we are always making do? How do we leverage more resources if we are always making do? Having professional spaces to create, educate, and represent our art is the key. A performing only building will be good, but we will continue to struggle to become vibrant without the pre-performance art spaces.

We could become a premiere arts community. If we are going to fundraise for a facility in this small village, the plan and funding should include arts spaces that can function for multi-use pre-performance and arts educational needs. Let's not let this opportunity only give us some of what we need. We have been doing that for too long. Please stand up and make your voice heard. The key to the Center for the Arts process is many voices lobbying for pre-performance and art space needs accounted for in the plan. Let's not make a mistake about this opportunity. YSKP has been working very hard to develop the capacity to provide some of those other space needs, but it is a big community need for our small organization to provide. With a collective performing arts center that also provides complementary spaces for perfomance needs, our arts community will have the capacity to leverage up the arts in a whole new way. Do not be side-tracked by the argument we have to choose, prioritize. We need to ask for a bigger pie, not carve up a small pie. It will be expensive anyway. Why not get what we really need? And get full community support.

Please fill out the survey and attend of you can. Unfortunately, I will be out of town! Help me, help us. See Jill Becker's invitation.

Thank you for your support of the performing arts in Yellow Springs.

Lisa Hunt

Related post: Center for the Arts Steering Committee public event Weds. night