I Heart the Arts is a new campaign that brings people together to save arts programs at El Camino College as it makes cuts to the performing and creative arts programs.
Music major Josias Canul-Marchand, 23, started the I Heart the Arts campaign.
“This is a nationwide issue. My goal with this is to really bring the arts to the spotlight,” Canul-Marchand said.
These cuts are a result of federal and state funding cuts and a reallocation of funding that emphasizes pre-K for all and favors K-12 over community colleges.
To the dismay of ECC arts students, the theater program is cutting all acting classes that are less than 70% filled, and the ballet and fashion programs experienced class cuts.
The orchestra and music program is cutting back on staff, and employee positions in the division office are being reduced as well.
To create awareness of the importance of the arts, I Heart the Arts will feature arts workshops, dance-offs, jam sessions, art exhibitions, fashion shows and more.
It will culminate in a final semester show where all of the El Camino arts programs unite.
The goal is to showcase the various arts programs at ECC, including fashion design, studio arts, dance and music, making it harder to justify the cuts to these programs.
Canul-Marchand is president of the Society of Music club at ECC.
His goal is to bring together all of the various arts clubs on campus, uniting them in one giant effort to save the arts.
However, like the collegiate programs, clubs and student organizations have budget problems of their own.
ECC has over 50 clubs and student organizations, and the Inter-Club Council sets the budgets for each club.
“I feel like they could still have a general club budget, but also give a limited budget to everyone that they could already access, but right now, accessibility is probably the main problem for us,” Emily Cho, studio arts major and Art Exhibition Club vice president, said.
Currently, there is one budget that all of the clubs share with the ICC.
This means that the clubs are constantly competing for funding, and some clubs are better funded than others.
Although the ICC’s budget allotment per club is potentially $15,000, newer clubs struggle to receive any start-up funding, while established clubs — especially those focused on supporting minority students — receive a larger subsidy.
This uncertainty around funding and lack of support can make it hard for new clubs to get off the ground, as first semester clubs can only receive $500 until becoming established.
“I’m just hoping that the ICC is open to other solutions or ideas on how to isolate club lines. We stopped having an individual budget for an individual club because people were either not using their funds or misusing them,” Cho, who collaborated with Canul-Marchand on the I Heart the Arts campaign, said.
Ruth Kembay, studio arts major and Art Exhibition Club president, highlighted the importance of individual arts programs.
“The Art Gallery has had events like the ones that the Art Exhibition Club performs now as an active club, but they were doing those events previously as one-off things to promote the Art Gallery, where we as a club are doing them constantly throughout the school year,” Kembay said.
The Tailor Made Fashion Club represents the fashion design program at ECC. Each year, the club hosts a fashion show that showcases the design talent of the fashion students.
This is an example of how ECC’s programs and clubs bring real-world experience and industry knowledge to the arts programs, creating a career path for creative students.
The first meeting of the I Heart the Arts campaign took place Friday, Oct. 24, in the Social Justice Center.
It was attended by about 20 students from various arts departments, representing theater, ballet, fashion design, orchestra and music.
Michael Miller, director of gallery and museum programming at ECC, acted in an advisory role for the students.
Students participated in an open dialogue on how to raise additional funding for the arts programs and obtain a larger allocation for the arts from the Board of Trustees.
The meeting was a successful first step in accomplishing the mission of the I Heart the Arts organization:
“To bring joy and love for the arts to the El Camino campus in a unified manner that is filled with compassion and enthusiasm. The arts are stronger together. We aim to create a cohesive coalition between all of the arts to find innovative solutions to problems that artists may face.”
Students can learn about future events by emailing josias_canulmarchand[at] elcamino[dot]edu.
Editor’s note:
- Captions were updated Sunday, Nov. 2
