Cultural Arts Center keeping arts alive in schools

In a tough economy, it’s one of the first things to go.

Grants and individual and corporate contributions to the arts often slow to a trickle when times are tight. Music, painting, and dance get viewed as unnecessary extras.

But cuts to these programs are costly to a community, according to Ann Cotton, who directs an arts in education initiative that provides instruction and accessibility for any child who is interested, regardless of ability to pay.

As executive director of The Cultural Arts Center on South Saint Andrews Street, Cotton knows the value of creative learning. That is, not just the craft of creating, but the value of art applications in literature, math and science classes.

“Many years ago, the public schools stopped their arts programs. We lost the arts in school, but that’s when the center started the ENCORE program. That was our first venture into the schools.”

Today the non-profit arts center serves about 400 children in after-school programs at the center and another 170 take classes at Grandview and Faine elementary schools in the afternoons.

Grandview Principal Todd Weeks said students have responded well to the after-school programs and the opportunity to do something fun has been an incentive for good behavior and good grades.

“When you look at improvement in academics, you have to look at it over time to get a true picture,” Weeks said. “I see a definitive change in children being excited about coming to school because we have things like steel drums, hip hop dance, and a Yamaha keyboarding lab. There is something else being added to the day besides two plus two equals four.”

Classes — offered three afternoons a week at Grandview — have also served to let students and parents know there are groups in the community which care about them and want to help them succeed.

“There’s just no way we can provide the type of opportunities we have unless it was with the Wiregrass Foundation, or The Cultural Arts Center,” Weeks said. “If we are going to continue to make improvements in our community, we will have to go more and more to community schools and the community must get involved with these programs.”

Susan Loftin, DCS director of Elementary Education Curriculum Services, said the effort is valuable to learning.

“There is a link between academic performance and the arts,” Loftin said. “Students involved in the arts show gains in reading and math skills. There is a direct relation between music and math. And there’s the benefit of providing them something different that they can become interested in. It makes learning more real.”

As the center’s partnership with Dothan City Schools has grown, students from Heard Magnet School and Selma Street Elementary School are now bused to the center for classes in steel drums, theatre, chorus, ballet, hip-hop, jazz and visual arts.

“Our mission is to serve under-served children and we began that with about 50 children in chorus and piano classes seven years ago,” Cotton said. “Now, The Cultural Arts Center has become its own entity in this 46,000-square-foot building that we manage. We have become the eleventh tenant at the center.”

Many of the students, who come from throughout the county, would not be exposed to the arts without private funding. Among them is 5-year-old Madilyn Nelson of Kinsey.

Her mother, Meagan Nelson, waits outside the classroom for Madilyn to complete ballet on a recent Monday.

“She’s constantly singing and dancing in her room,” Nelson said as laughter and lessons blend and echo down the halls of the old school building, constructed in 1928.

“The classes she takes are free. There is no way I could afford them. She loves it. She’s grasping it and seems to be interested. She always looks forward to Mondays.”

Her teacher, Tiffany Swan, says Madilyn’s story is typical.

“Almost all of these kids couldn’t afford the classes,” she said, walking down to another classroom to pick up her second group of students. “Being able to reach students who couldn’t experience the arts in any form or fashion is rewarding.”

But Swan’s classes were cut this year due to funding. There are fewer slots available.

J.E. Saliba, a founding member of The Cultural Arts Center, said it is a reflection of the times.

“It’s like everybody else,” Saliba said. “These are tough times and all nonprofits have had their funding diminished. It’s difficult because several hundred kids come through the center’s doors and we have the kids we serve at the schools. We don’t want to turn any one of them away.
“These are children we would never have in our programs. They would never be exposed to the arts. The schools can’t provide all they would like to and the resources we have works toward a great relationship with the schools.”

Through a Wiregrass Foundation grant, the center has also helped with a first-year initiative of artists in the classrooms at Faine and Grandview. Two visual arts teachers and one theatre teacher work with students in math, science and reading classes.

The teachers have been trained on infusing academics with the arts and so far the programs seem a successful way to engage students. “It demonstrates to teachers what can happen when you bring arts in,” Cotton said.

She estimates more than 1,500 low- to moderate-income students have been reached since the center was established in 2002. But staff members wonder how long the relationship with these children can be sustained. While the center has not lost whole grants, awards have been cut.

“When the State of Alabama went into proration, the Alabama State Arts Council reduced their grant allocations for the 2008-2009 year in midstream,” Cotton said. “When proration took place in January 2009, the State Department of Education received less money and passed that (shortage) down to the local school districts.”

Those cuts hurt, especially because they were mid-year. Things already budgeted for and/or purchased had to be absorbed in a dwindling budget.
“We were already into program periods and supply purchases,” Cotton said. “This year, every grant from the state is heavily influenced by proration. So again, we did not get nearly as much as we needed and in order to do what we have been doing, we have to raise more money.”