Who Will Be the Mentors?

We are excited that we now have our first student! We actually bartered for her by trading art lessons for grants processing. This a first baby step toward getting a program going to teach children about art. Art is fast becoming extinct in the schools today, as budgets crunch, and crunch some more, but that's always the way it's been, isn't it? The first to go is art and music in school curriculums when the money gets tight!

So where do kids go after school if they are not engaged in sports, and if their parents are not home? What do they do if they are creative kids without an outlet? We know that some of them use their creativity in destructive ways. This organization, though young, hopes to try to remedy this situation. It is a slow process. First we need a place for this to happen. We are searching for grants to renovate "our" building on 4th St. That would be one place. We'll also need start up money for supplies.

It always comes down to money, doesn't it? But kids need to emulate older people too. If there is no art instruction in the schools' lower grades and if parents see no use to art, then we can fill in with that mentoring for creative kids.

In the hum drum of life, people forget that television shows are the creative efforts of someone, that the television itself was in the imagination of someone. Progress in human terms has always been the imagination of people who want to make things better. Instruction in art in the schools is one way to foster that imagination. If it is gone, who will the mentors be?