DISCOURSE
new organization , we ’ re not five years old yet — we don ’ t have the kind of reserves that allow us to just wipe the rent . … We were very , very active in seeking out disaster relief grants ( in the amount of about $ 100,000 ). So the ( Paycheck Protection Program ; Coronavirus Aid , Relief , and Economic Security Act ; and ) funding through the City of Sacramento . … Those grants covered the expenses that normally would be covered by tenant rent . … I am still actively seeking emergency grants , ideally to keep rates low into the next fiscal year , because we have a long recovery process ahead of us .
We released the tenants from their educational obligations this year , in part because distance learning meant that it was a different expectation from schools .
You have a very small staff . It ’ s you and two other administrators ? Yes . And one of those is actually brand-new . We brought her on in December ( 2020 ) because , this is the other big COVID pivot , in March of last year , everything shut down , all of our programs shut down . … Other county schools , where we are being paid to be there … said , “ We ’ re not going to pay you out unless you can provide distance learning material for us ,” and we were like , we need that money , so we went digital . We created ( CLARA Classroom ), a digital platform for arts education … ( for transitional kindergarten through 12th grade ) with 20 hours of standards-aligned arts instruction in dance , music and theater . … We ’ re not limited to Sacramento County , we are not limited to only serving as far as our teaching artists can drive . So we have begun expanding our programs , and … that is why we brought on a new staff member to help us grow that product . … The hope is that we ’ re integrated into the budget process , and we ’ ll be in schools in September .
How else does CLARA support the arts community and the industry ? The program that we were about to launch in March of 2020 was a teaching artist training program , because one thing that we found as we began our work here is that there ’ s a lot of need for arts in the schools . There are some funding opportunities out there to fund arts in schools because people recognize it ’ s a hot-button item , but there ’ s actually a pretty limited number of artists who identify as teaching artists and have the tools to be successful in a classroom setting . And so what CLARA wanted to do last year was start this project where we would take artists through a yearlong training program that would talk about curriculum development and classroom management , using the arts as a tool for leadership and also the arts as a tool to manage a classroom . …
We were working with a lot of local nonprofits to train their teaching artists . We were going to reach out to as many independent artists that we could find that were looking for ways to stabilize their own revenue and try to start creating this teaching artist community in Sacramento . And then the pandemic came . … We ’ re putting ( it ) off for another year . …
The City of Sacramento has a program called Any Given Child that does train teaching artists , but the assumption with that program is that you already have classroom experience . CLARA ’ s program would be getting folks up to the level where they could be eligible for Any Given Child .
One of CLARA ’ s goals was to serve more than 10,000 students during the 2020-21 school year . How did the number change in the past year ? We hit 6,500 ( in 2019 ), and we ’ ve been up to that point every year , basically doubling the number of kids we serve , so we were like , “ Oh , we ’ ll do 10,000 next year .” … Obviously , an in-person camp wasn ’ t an option . … Our camps that usually serve 100 kids served 20 ( last summer ). … We ’ re sitting at that same 6,500 number ( for 2020 ) that we got in 2019 .
In what ways was the digital summer camp last year different ? That was probably the biggest single disappointment for me about the pandemic . … ( We had a performing artist teaching ) who had been performing on Broadway the week it shut down , we had the hip-hop dance teacher who was J . Lo ’ s choreographer , we had a Grammy-nominated guitarist teaching our guitar class … and we had 15 of them in these Zoom classes . … But only 20 kids got that experience .
What do you think you would do differently ? We invested in a marketing person to help us create that marketing plan , to help us figure out what we were doing wrong . And we really made it a priority to properly market our camps this year .
Can you tell me about how the tenants have been using the outdoor space ? One of the things that has been so interesting about the pandemic is … seeing the way in which our tenants have risen to the challenge . So you do have tenants like the Music Academy and Alliance Française who just said , “ All right , we ’ re going digital ,” and move to Zoom lessons . … Tenants like McKeever School of Dance and Sacramento Ballet who said , “ Yeah , we can do digital , but you ’ re not getting the same experience ,” like specifically , the timing … ( so ) on our campus right now , you would notice that there is an outdoor stage that ’ s been built , that there ’ s also a lot of areas of the parking lot that are segmented off with parking cones because the ballet and McKeever Dance … are doing outdoor lessons , and they started that in summer . They taught through 100 degree weather . … They taught while the temperatures dropped . The Sacramento Ballet brought in space heaters . …
And then the Brazilian Center … one of the programs they offered was a cooking class . They do Brazilian food in the space , and their kitchen had just been licensed as a catering kitchen . And so now they ’ re working with Mercy Pedalers and a few other local nonprofits , and they are creating meals for the homeless , and they ’ re serving 500 meals a week to homeless folks throughout Sacramento . …
28 comstocksmag . com | April 2021