>newground
The Paul W. Ogle Cultural and Community Center
Pretend you are a child again. Imagine you are surrounded by friends and teachers and hundreds of kids from your community, waiting for the curtain to rise on the first stage show of your life. See the lights, take in the smell of the crisp program in your hand, feel the excitement as you watch a full-scale production of Berenstain Bears on Stage, The Tweaksters, or I Hear America Singing.
What sounds like a child's dream come true is happening now at IU Southeast. Called the Chase Children's Series, this cultural arts program is completely funded by community and corporate organizations and is free to every school-age child in Southern Indiana. Shows are held in IU Southeast's Paul W. Ogle Cultural and Community Center, a premiere performance venue named after and mostly funded by Indiana philanthropist Paul W. Ogle. The center houses four indoor theaters, an amphitheater, and an art gallery, and serves a public that extends well beyond the greater Louisville, Kentucky area.
The Chase Children's Series started in the fall of 1996, just a few months after the opening of the Ogle Center. The brainchild of Ogle Center Manager Kyle Ridout, a 1985 graduate of the IU Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, the series was conceived as a way to expose underprivileged children to higher education and the arts. Thanks to the generosity of more than a half-dozen community organizations and businesses, the series went from serving 2,000 disadvantaged students in 1996 to entertaining more than 10,000 students of all economic levels in 2006.
IUS Chancellor Sandra R. Patterson-Randles loves seeing the auditorium lit with children's faces. She says, "Our performances and other offerings inspire in young children an appreciation of arts and culture that they will, we hope, continue to nurture throughout their lives. But," she goes on, "the program goes far beyond showing children a good time. It is also their first exposure to a college campus."
Each performance is followed by lunch, a campus tour, and a keepsake. Says Ridout, "We want kids to experience the exciting atmosphere of a college campus, so they feel safe here and get excited about their future education. We believe that if they come every year beginning with kindergarten, by the time they become high school juniors and seniors, they will be thinking seriously about enrolling in college." And when the kids go home with brand new, bright red, IU Southeast backpacks, they will have taken the first step toward considering just that.
Chase and the other series sponsors aren't merely raising the curtain for these kids. They are setting the stage for an entire community to love and participate in the arts and higher education.
Thank you letters from the children to the sponsors.
Ann Gordon
Visit IU Southeast at www.ius.edu.