DO IT YOURSELF ARTS AND CULTURE MONTH

START HERE: Red Umbrellas in Balboa Park

GRASSROOTS EFFORT--With San Diego’s beautiful new library being dedicated this September, let’s make the ninth month of the year grassroots Culture Month in San Diego. 

And, let’s do it ourselves.  One person, one family at a time.

We don’t need a civic leader or a high priced PR type to beat the drums for the arts.  We can do this San Diego.

Let’s support all things creative.

If everyone somehow supported just one venue of the creative arts we’d have a wonderful, fulfilling 30 days.

We can even team up without even knowing each other.  For example all of you that support the Old Globe and the La Jolla Playhouse, let’s find a small theater company in San Diego and attend a performance.   Same with your 99 seater theatre aficionado’s, who might book a performance seat in a larger theatre you haven’t been in for years.

You symphony supporters find an evening to attend a coffee house performance like those at Café Ipe in Encinitas and vice versa.

Roger Conlee and Caitlin Rother are terrific local writers—find their work at a locally owned bookstore or go online to support them and all local writers.

Support a local art gallery that’s off the beaten track...buy a painting or a new piece of pottery.

Go sit at one of those new tables in the Plaza de Panama after visiting Spanish Village.  Let’s make September the most visited month along Balboa Park’s Museum row.

Make this the decade that you promised yourself to take up oil painting.  Learn to write a mystery and learn how to play a saxophone or do both.

Make a donation to the high school band in your neighborhood.  These kids play for free in local parades, but the equipment bus still needs gas.

And, if there’s a cultural or charitable event planned for September—let’s support that too.

And, forget where you got this idea.  It’s not about one person.  It’s all of us jumping in to celebrate the arts.  And, if this seems silly pie-in-the-sky stuff remember all we’re asking is one individual doing one something for the arts.

And, maybe, just maybe we can have some fun doing this and stop sniping at each other.

What am I doing?

I’m going to Ray Street in North Park and buy an oil painting.  Next I’m off to the Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado to take in “The 39 Steps.”

And, I’m planting an olive tree because this town and this country lately need a lot of olive branches—pronto.