By Any Dreams Necessary

When school budgets get cut, many times one of the first things to go are the arts. Yet numerous studies have shown that children learn a variety of subjects better when exposed to the arts. As artsusa.org says:

...for certain populations—including young children, students from economically disadvantaged circumstances, and students needing remedial instruction—learning in the arts may be uniquely able to advance learning and success in other areas.

It's this need for arts education that By Any Dreams Necessary founder and executive director Garrett Naiman saw and is helping to fill. The organization is a mostly volunteer effort by a collective of artists and educators dedicated to nurturing the creative spirit and educational aspirations of youth. They're new—they've only been at it about a year and half, and are still working on getting 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

By Any Dreams Necessary team

So far they've awarded half a dozen scholarships, two in 2010 and four in 2011. All the recipients were required to submit an application with both an essay/personal statement component, as well as an original art component. Some submitted poems, others mini documentaries or paintings. You may remember back in July when I linked to a poem called "One Oakland" by 2011 scholarship winner Kenya Hall. If you haven't already (or even if you have), go check out Kenya's poem. This year they'll be giving away another 4 scholarships, and are hoping to increase both the quantity and amount of the awards soon.

The other part of their work is the Artist in Residence program. It places an experienced arts-educator in a public middle school. The goal of the program is to provide art education to students who attend low-resource schools that are unable to consistently provide art in their school day curriculum. By Any Dreams Necessary provides funding for the program, including all art supplies and materials. Currently they have an arts-educator at the Urban Promise Academy off Fruitvale. The Artist in Residence works with the school in several ways:

• basic arts instruction
• arts integration across academic subjects
• teach the faculty about how to use art in their classrooms

If you're interested in learning more or helping out, contact By Any Dreams Necessary.

stargazing in Oakland

Sunday was another Spare the Air day, so we tried to minimize travel as much as possible. Fortunately, Chabot Space & Science Center is not far from our house, as we'd already made plans to visit there again. This trip was to hear a talk on exoplanets by Dr. Alex Filippenko, an astronomy professor at Cal. You may have seen him quoted in various astronomy articles, or on the PBS science show Nova. We found the talk extremely interesting and well-presented (he's won numerous teaching awards, including 'best professor' at Cal.)

One of the few upsides to the recent weather is that the hills weren't socked in with fog like they've been much of the summer. So after hors d'oeuvres from local favorite Italian Colors and then the talk, we got to enjoy viewing the heavens through the Chabot telescopes as well as various smaller ones belonging to volunteers. Besides a clear view of Jupiter and the Galilean moons, we got to see the Ring Nebula; a globular cluster (i.e., a big cloud of stars); and a couple of binary star pairs.

Then this morning I read about Chabot in a nice Oakland article in New York magazine. Besides Chabot and various other local favorites from the Fox Theater to Bakesale Betty's, it also mentioned local blogs The Oakbook and 38th Notes.

Chabot Space & Science Center

Chabot Space & Science Center

Nestled in the Oakland hills between Joaquin Miller Park and Redwood Regional Park is the Chabot Space & Science Center. I should have included it in my post on Oakland institutions, because they've been doing science and astronomy education for over 125 years. It was originally in Downtown, but moved to the hills in 1915 because of increasing light pollution. The current location opened in 2000. In all my time as a Bay Area resident (even in the last 9 years that's it's been a few miles away) I'd hiked or biked past it many times, but I'd never visited it.

Soyuz Descent Module

So Saturday we changed that. I read about their Dinner, A Movie and the Universe program somewhere, and we decided to take advantage of it. We started with a short hike in Redwood, then
went inside. We had to select which movies we wanted to attend and gave our name for dinner reservations, then proceeded to wander amongst the exhibits. It's not a huge museum, but there are lots of exhibits, with many of them "hands-on" for kids. We watched a short movie on the history of the telescope (interesting, but no Oscar-winner) in the planetarium theater, then headed over for dinner. There was some confusion about our reservation, but we were seated after a short wait. For $15 you get a choice of appetizers, salads, entrees and desserts; beverages are extra. It was good, not great, but inexpensive for 4 courses, and the service was good. After dinner we returned to the planetarium for a 'digitally animated alternative music show' called Sonic Vision. We didn't particularly like that even though I like some of the music, because it was really loud and didn't really have much to do with space or science. It was more of a 38-minute music video with acid-trip inspired graphics projected on the planetarium dome.

Unfortunately, as frequently happens in the Oakland hills, the fog rolled in around dinner, and we had to settle for two movies and dinner, and not much of the universe, beyond what's in the displays. Overall I'd recommend the Chabot, particularly if you've got an inquisitive youngster. If the $10.95/$14.95 admission is too much for your current budget, you can still make a nice day of it. A free hike in Redwood, a picnic dinner, followed by free star-gazing through one of the telescopes (Friday and Saturday, weather permitting) and you can have a very low cost but lovely outing.

weightless?