Sneak Peek: Adrienne Arsht Podcast

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.