Why do we need an Art Center? This is a question many people have asked me when I talk about the need for one in Cornwall to serve the region. After all we have a small city Art Gallery downtown; a couple of schools with a set up for stage plays and other performance art; why we even have a few taverns for the musically inclined to perform and make a couple of dollars. Yes, that is true but these are merely band aide solutions to help to fulfill a need that is not being addressed. This region needs a home for the area Artists to congregate, show off their talent to the locals and visitors to Cornwall, as well as teach and mentor the future young Artists of our area. The last reason is in my opinion the most important of them all, teaching and mentoring the next generation of artists. I know this as I have had the pleasure of teaching art to children who have no interest in sports but excel at painting and drawing but there are many more whose parents can’t afford to pay for private classes even though they know that they have a gifted child. Instead they have a board kid walking the street and maybe getting into trouble.
We the tax payers of Cornwall have been supporting sports in Cornwall with Hockey arenas and Baseball fields but seem to have issue with spending money on the other equally important aspect of Human development and that is creative intelligence. The Governments of Ontario and Canada say they support the arts but cut back on funding to the schools to provide quality Arts centered programs for the students who are gifted in these areas. Creative intelligence is as equally important to our society as math skills, maybe even more so. If you don’t think that’s true just look around you, everything you wear, live in, drive to work in, the food you eat, your computer, the colour of paint on your walls, patterns on your sheets these things were all developed by a creative person. The movies and television programs you love, the music you listen to, the beautiful photos on your new calendar are all made possible by creative people and Cornwall is full of them. Oh, and let’s not forget our beautiful new arena under construction in town a creative person designed it.
You can stand on the corner anywhere in town and toss a stone and you will probably hit one of us creative souls. There are hundreds of us.
You want to bring people to Cornwall to spend their money? Then support the Arts because while they are here looking at the artwork, taking in a play or sipping a beer listening to a local band they will be shopping, sleeping, buying a meal and filling up with gas before they leave.
Who needs an Arts Center? We do!!
Written by Sandra Taylor Hedges
Appeared in the Local Seeker: http://theseeker.ca/newsite/
