U art professor Jimmy Lucero arrives in a classroom on Salt Lake City’s west side each week with an art lesson and a dream for his students that they can rise above their circumstances and go to college. But soon it will remain just that8212;a dream.
The Mestizo Institute for Culture and Art, where middle schoolers and high schoolers take free art classes from members of their neighborhood and U professors, will be forced to close its doors in early 2010 if it doesn’t find a way to raise enough money to keep its building on 600 West and North Temple.
In order to keep a program that encourages young people on the west side to stay in school, get involved in art and8212;just as importantly8212;apply for college, MICA is holding a fundraiser Saturday for city residents to donate plasma and give the $35 they earn to the institute. But the forecast for their success, like the one hanging over the city, is a gloomy one.
Their financial troubles are nothing new. It has been a challenge to keep the doors open since founders Terry Hurst and his wife, Ruby Chacon, an internationally renowned artist, started the institute in June 2008. MICA relies on revenue from an adjoining coffee shop and grants and personal donations, but with a monthly cost of $10,000, it’s never enough to keep the institute open in the long run.
This month is the first the coffee shop has ever broken even, said Mary Lucero, a U physiology professor and institute board member.
To turn things around, Hurst left the city late last September on his bike and on a mission. He’s traveling across the western United States, starting in Seattle and working his way down the coast before returning to Utah, asking everyone he meets to make a donation.
They’re ultimately shooting for $5 million, a sum its members are confident will allow them to keep their building open for a long time to come. But two and a half months after initiating their huge push for donations, they’ve only raised $20,000.
Although MICA is hurting under a damaged economy, its money troubles are nothing new to the neighborhood. MICA members are trying desperately to change that.
The city’s west side is often generalized as the more poor, criminal and hopeless half of the city8212;the shadow cast by the east side’s light.
“Kids grow up in the community and think some bad things about themselves,” said Walter Mason, a project manager for the institute.
The institute’s members want to show the students that a better life is out there if they want it. They take them on field trips to the U to familiarize them with the financial aid office and the academic counselors to show them that there are people in higher education who want to help them succeed if they’re willing, Mary Lucero said.
A lot of the impoverished students come from broken homes with parents who did not go to college, Jimmy Lucero said. A lot of them don’t think they can make much of themselves and continue a cycle of service labor work and disrespect to authority, which MICA is trying to change, he said.
Even if the students do not attend college, the MICA members at least want them to stay on the right side of the law and become upstanding members of their community, he said.
Jimmy Lucero said he knows it can work. Even before the creation of the institute, he participated in the mosaic project8212;painting murals on walls in the neighborhood8212;during summer 2008 with Ruby Chacon and a lot of young students who used to be on the wrong side of the law.
“A few of them used to tag in the past,” he said. “Now, they were spending their time more constructively.”
If the institute closes next year, it will lose that opportunity8212;one these young students can’t afford to lose, lucero said.
Editor’s Note — Ruby Chacon, artist and wife of Terry Hurst, was inaccurately named as Mary Chacon. It has also been two and a half months since the fundraiser push, not four.
Photo courtesy Walter MasonXico Gonzales, an artist from California, works with students from the west side of Salt Lake City at the Mestizo Institute for Culture and Art. The MICA could be forced to close if it is not able to raise $5 million.