Sneak Peek: Adrienne Arsht and Debbie Shapiro Podcast

In a two-part podcast with philanthropist Adrienne Arsht and university presenter Debbie Shapiro, we explore ways arts are being encouraged in communities, especially for younger people. For this weeks' Sneak Peek, listen to brief excerpts with each.

Adrienne Arsht

Arts education, I would say, is sadly now a requirement in the private sector. Used to be in schools, we could do that, but now it has become, if you will, a responsibility of a community, and in Miami, the Adrian Arsht Center's flagship project on arts education is called Learning Through the Arts, and it was started with the fifth grade in the public school system, and Miami-Dade County has, I think it's the fourth largest school system in America, and we created the idea of the plan that every fifth grader would be able to attend a performance at the Arsht Performing Arts Center, and the children were bused to that place, they were given backstage tours, and taught about what a performing arts center is, and a performance is, and this was broadened to include subsequent years, all those in the seventh grade, and then most recently all those in the ninth grade, so that now children, every child will have attended a performance, and each year the Arsht Center makes up or creates a musical of a topic, and the children see how that is created, and then they experience it.

Debbie Shapiro

It’s so important that we continue to develop unique high quality family programming for young audiences so that we're not only serving the surrounding families today, but we're also planting the seeds to develop the audiences of the future who we hope will look back and have formative memories with us because there is so much possibility that could stem from that, ranging from just having that memory  to more specific and serious commitment to participation and practice in the arts and pursuing careers and everything in between.