www.wibw.com: More than 400 high school thespians from across Kansas visited the Statehouse Wednesday to urge lawmakers to prioritize arts funding, marking the 10th year Kansas Thespians have made the trip to the Capitol.
Students representing 35 schools traveled from communities including Kansas City and Wichita to take part in the annual advocacy effort during Theatre in Our Schools Month.
7 comments:
First off, absolutely props to these students for coming together in collective action to advocate for such a personally meaningful and important message. I think having four hundred students showing up at the state capital and statehouse to advocate for funding is really a powerful message. It is so sad to see how arts funding in education is always the first on the chopping block when it comes to budget cuts. Even when it is funded, the arts more often than not still really lack funding. This article makes me reflect a lot on my own high school experience when it comes to theater and how lucky I am to have gone to a public charter school that offered funding for the arts. I also think about how the lack of funding can really affect students' futures if they want to pursue theater professionally. I credit a significant reason to my success in the college application process was that I had the opportunity to work with a budget that let me do cool things that enhanced my portfolio, I wish all students who were passionate about the arts had the same opportunity to get to work on projects of different scales but rarely is that an option.
I think that this is one of the most important things that these students can do because truly the arts matter so much to these young children who are growing and have their minds developling and it is so important for students to be involved in the arts not for the end goal of a career in the arts but when a child is in the arts throughout their education, there is proof that they're gaining confidence, they're building teambuilding skills, they are maturing and learning to come out of their comfort zone and that is so vital and important to turning into competen, team working, mature adults. I'm so incredibly excited and proud to see that these kids have found their art form and saw that their love for their art form was dying and not being funded properly, and that they stood up for themselves and went straight to the problem and voiced their concerns, it gives me hope for the future.
I think this whole movement in Kasas really just demonstrates just how powerful people's voices are. While its unfortuentate that this is something that students have to activity fight for. It's great to see just how much you can change just by showing up and showing out. I'm really hopeful for the future. Based off how these types of movements usually end up working out. Most people can real see the value in funding programs like this, if you just show them what the possibilities are. I think now more than ever are arts programs critical to student life. I mean they are really what not only develop skills outside of typical work skills. But they also provide character to these students. Get them outside of the typical work cycle that so many people are trapped into. It's an escape for a lot of people, and I feel that students should be also equally able to develop these skills as its rather critical for their development.
It’s really nice to see high school students stepping up for their own passions. I’ve always loved educational theatre. I believe taking part in theatre in high school can really help and give students useful skill sets they can use throughout their life. I really have never understood why funding goes down for the arts. Parents love seeing their children grow and take part in different activities, including theatre. High school programs have served as a foundation for many aspects of entertainment. I’m sure many famous actors, actresses, creatives, and directors took part in high school theatre programs before deciding to pursue acting full time. If funding for the arts go down, I will not only impact the arts now, but I feel like it will dull the quality of the arts in the future if it continues. I would hate to see younger generations not be given the same opportunity I was given in high school to be able to have fun and create theatre, all because some people who don’t experience theatre believe it isn’t important enough.
“Good for these students!” was the first thought that crossed my mind while reading the headline before even clicking on the article to read it in full. It’s incredibly sad to me that this is an argument that has to be made time and time again, for the importance of arts funding in schools, even sadder in this case that the students are the ones who are primarily affected by this, yet are the biggest advocates in actively advocating for change. That being said, there’s beauty and empowerment in that fact, but the systems in place shouldn’t have caused them to feel the need to go all the way to Kansas lawmakers just to make this argument to a court of law. I went to a school which recieved zero public funding for our actual theatre performances, although we were privledged enough to have a great deal of facilities funding which overall negated a lot of the damage lack of public funding from the schoolboard caused, this still highly affected how our theatre department was run in having to constantly worry about budget and fundraising. I can’t imagine discovering how hard it is for students to develop a genuine love and passion for theatre in a school setting which doesn’t even have theatre programs, as though they can still in theory participate outside of school, educational theatre matters and opens the door for so many.
This is actually so heartwarming and good to see. The arts so often get the short end of the stick, especially in educational institutions. This is very upsetting to me, as I would argue the arts is one of the most important things in life, and is practically fundamental to being human. I came from a high school that didn’t have much funding at all for the arts, and I think that what we created despite that and because of those limits, was absolutely wonderful, but I want to strive for a future where it isn’t such a struggle just to be human and express that humanity. To see young people continue to advocate for the arts, gives me hope that maybe one day, these efforts won’t be for nothing and the arts will thrive. The next generation scares me so often because of so much of the negative news about them, as well as the increasingly high rates of things such as lack of media literacy, so it’s really nice to see something like this happening.
I am so proud of and moved by those 400 students that went to the Statehouse to speak up for what mattered to them. It is a terrifying thing to walk up to an adult, let alone a politician, and say that you think they are wrong. With the amount of people there, I know that anyone that went in scared still felt the full support of their peers behind them. The article does not discuss much of what the students were fighting for, other than a broad funding for theater. I hope that their actions move the politicians to see how important theater is to the communities they are serving. Actually, I just realized this article has a video, and it is crazy that they have been organizing in this way for 10 years! That tradition is a beautiful way to give back to your community and ensure the arts continue for future generations.
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