Passion. It’s a key ingredient for triumph in the arts world.
Whether it’s singing, playing the drums, acting, painting or
sculpture, it doesn’t happen right without passion. Neither does
building an arts center in our small town.
Passion. It’s a key ingredient for triumph in the arts world. Whether it’s singing, playing the drums, acting, painting or sculpture, it doesn’t happen right without passion. Neither does building an arts center in our small town.
Fortunately, we’re blessed with passionate people who simply would not accept the stock answer when it came to the decades-old question, “When is Gilroy going to have an arts center?”
“Maybe later” wasn’t going to cut it.
And thus the large and happy headline at the top of The Dispatch last Tuesday read: “Capital campaign for the arts center.”
For Gilroy, the campaign is a watershed event, forming a partnership between the city, community groups that supports the arts and benefactors who are being asked to fund the capital campaign.
It’s exciting to flip through the brochure which explains the volunteer committee’s plan to create a
$3 million endowment that will annually fill the gap between projected expenses and revenues. Community arts centers are rarely money-making operations. The groups using them can’t afford to pay full-freight rents, but the endowment formed by the arts committee and administered through the Gilroy Foundation will make sure that the city doesn’t have to dig into general fund revenues for the costs of ongoing operations once the center is built.
Here’s how it works: You, your family or your corporation can buy the naming rights to various pieces of the building and that money goes to the endowment. If you’d like to name the Star Dressing Room after Aunt Barbara, who loved the ballet, it’s $15,000. The Member’s Lounge naming rights are tagged at $35,000. And the Main Theater (the whole 30,000 square feet of it) is $1,250,000 and requires a benefactor of obvious sincerity, commitment and generosity.
Donna Pray and Sherri Stuart, the two committee members who are front and center in this effort, are longtime supporters of the arts in Gilroy. Step by step, they have led the effort to push for an arts center on a number of fronts.
What they and others have recognized is that Gilroy is a haven for the arts. Think of all the arts-related programs that our community has embraced: the violin program at Antonio del Buono School; Phil Robb’s wonderful choirs at Gilroy High School, South Valley Civic Theatre, the city’s mural projects, South Valley Symphony, Pintello Comedy Theater … the list is long.
The Gilroy Center for the Arts will provide a home, a common ground for so many of these wonderful organizations. And the fact that it will be located downtown is an added benefit.
If you’re interested in learning about how to help, call 848-1449.
The design for the Gilroy Arts Center is extremely thoughtful. Under one configuration, it will be large enough to host the annual Chamber of Commerce awards dinner. Reconfigured, the black box theater emerges for a small, intimate production. Classrooms, rehearsal rooms and, of course, a kitchen give the building plenty of versatility.
The groundbreaking and the day the Gilroy Arts Center is dedicated are not that far away. If you can do something to help that effort, step forward. Listen to the music, hear the children singing gleefully, bask in the applause – the arts give our community vibrancy, confidence and identity. Gilroy will make this happen, and you have an opportunity to be a “part of the program.”
