Columbia College, Chicago / Wealth and New Wealth Symposium / Began April 22, 2009                                                   Artist, TRACEE PICKETT  / Wealth and Education in the US

Three Video Lectures and Full Paper Below:  For More Lectures go to Columbia College, Chicago

Artist / Educator, Tracee Pickett @ Tracee and Company will bring you articles of arts and education during the up and coming year. Articles that invigorate the mind and explore fine arts on levels that have just begun to be uncovered. Give us time to blog and expand our series of articles on issues involving the arts!

Before we begin, please forgive the errors in the paper below.  This post was originally to contain only the Video.  I am working on corrections in the paper and trying to reload the last part of the Video segment.  Enjoy the Video and Thank You for Participating…

Wealth and Education in the US          Part    One /Two/Three

Bare With Me As This Is My First Virtual Format-  In Selecting the Links Below, You Must Select QuickTime After You Click on the Following Links:

Part One  “Ingenuity of a Dream”

http://home.comcast.net/~columbiaseminar/WealthPart1.mp4

Part Two  “Projections of the Future”

http://home.comcast.net/~columbiaseminar/WealthPart2.mp4

Part Three  “A New Reality”       NOTE: Part Three Video is Incomplete.  Please Read Paper For Ending / “Part Three End”

http://home.comcast.net/~columbiaseminar/WealthPart3.mp4

Free QuickTime  http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Paper Below:

First Issue:

Wealth and Education in the US Part One / Two / Three
Lecturer @ Columbia College, Chicago Virtual Symposium:

“Wealth and New Wealth” 2009
artist / educator TRACEE PICKETT

Go To Columbia College for More Lectures_________________________________________________________________________________________

Part One        Ingenuity of a Dream                                                                                                                                                       Part Two        Projections of the Future
Part Three    A New Reality

Excerpt:
It’s a big world out there, and within the arts are safe places to learn and grow.  We need the arts, but more than that, we need our creative people to find a higher meaning in everything that they publicly create. We need them to create visions of whole worlds with whole values and whole forms of equality.

We need our artists today more than ever before to be visionaries.

It was here in this very school that one of the greatest historians said: ‘there was a time when artists were revered for their new and equality laden visions of what the world could be.”  This great historian for Columbia College will always be remembered in my mind as I have written him with thanks and many credits for enriching the work I have prepared.

The Greatest European Artists were painters of great cities that hadn’t yet existed, and then they were built.  It was something like this I remember. And I have seen the paintings to prove his theory.   He said: Real artists are visionaries of a better world that does not yet exist.

As the years have passed and I found children that could only draw images that they were exposed to through television / that now / because of funded art programs, interact socially and play with other children / they communicate with others on their own terms as well as draw images from real time through teaching through the arts, I still wondered.  Where are all the visionaries that paint visions of what could be? Where are all the creative people going?

What do they really want to create in the world?

Today, there are more and more children who have turned seven, and have never had their own bed or a story read to them.

I’m not sure I would have anything to say to such a world if I were that child.

There was a young woman who turned 16 and had never painted a picture because she had cerebral palsy, and with that her muscles stiffen and her jaw and joints cramp, she was in a wheelchair that was controlled by her grandmother most of the time, and there was not enough money for more classes after she learned to create block prints and the history of book making and many other classes where she could view beautiful works of art exploring a world through the stories of others’ lives, she listened.

Her hands became full and dirty of tactile pigments and paint. And her jaw opened as she laughed. Our young woman learned five minutes of tai-chi from her wheelchair.  She listened to the movements and kept up with every muscle that she could, she remembered the breathing techniques that I often reminded her of and to stretch her fingers and open her hands.

Her grandmother held out her fingers and she wiggled them well, as she learned to relax her muscles through breathing. A year later, we had eight students in this class and as I walked gently over to each one to give personal instruction on how to use the pastels I approached her.  Hand clinched with a fist,…

FULL PAPER:

Wealth and Education in the US / Part 1 / Ingenuity of a Dream

We have to first recognize, that comprehensive learning happens more often than not with more than just reading and writing. True whole learning takes place in a multi-stimulus sort of way.  The early founders and peoples of “the new world” learned in very different ways than we do today. There were once only one room school houses in communities and not much in the way of modern conveniences. The ingenuity of ideas became the ingenuity that began a dream. Our country became the land of opportunity for many.

People had no choice then, but to roll up their sleeves to create, and create they did. Many of those people were considered to be leaders that created opportunity for themselves and often created opportunity for others.  Many Founders knew they were fortunate to have been given the chances of a great nation and were proof that the dreams of ordinary people were possible. Through the Founders’ work, often, better jobs were created for others along the way.  It wasn’t far off that perhaps, the fantastically fortunate were slumped with parents and family members who immigrated from conditions that were not so good to find something better.  Many understood immoral conditions first hand in the respect of equality for all people. The knowledge of inequalities of a world were recognized by many with great historical content. The dreamers then began to build something more.

The learning took place through the eyes of our immigrants and all of our native people who were a part of something different than today in everyday life.  Today, because of many people of the past: inventors, educators, artist, business leaders, and workers alike who worked very hard to create through ingenuity: often from filling a need in the world, formed what became their dream, that brought most of us to many modern conveniences, conveniences that entertain us rather than educate us in our 21^st century lives.

Many of our daily lives have become sources of much allotted times of convenience. We didn’t have this before. And often, for most of us, our activities have not brought anything forth for the internal spirit or vitality of humanity, to take place.   Many of us do not have a place of contemplative thought for a measure of: equality, dreaming, or ingenuity.  That has often been left for the thinkers of institutes of higher learning or conglomerates.  Our people of yesterday, learned even to dream of something more, through knowing that it was they, of their time, that were at the forefront of making great things happen in the world. Our fortunate dreamers of invention and humanity were of common ground with enormous amounts of understanding of what equality meant to them and others, as some tried to pave the way for the US in getting there.

Those dreamers became leaders, with respected efforts of a better world for us all.  As then, many began to believe that they could be the dreamer and the leaders of their own dreams. Through the greatest humanistic dreams in the US, came great reality of moral social reforms that had not been seen before.  There were many great dreamers that made substantial monetary profits that then, founded organizations to expand upon a dream for us all to create more holistic moral based contributions to all as well as some profit.

Some dreamers, thinkers, and organizers, preceded in creating the dream of a world of equality, with no great monetary profit.  Because they knew that the profit of living in an equality driven world was great.  Much work would be needed, and the risk of perhaps, fundamental spiritual freedom had become undeniably recognized, and monumentally important in our new world.

Our founding leaders of what became conglomerate corporations, valued humanity, and human life.  Often these people began in the new world with only ingenuity, and sometimes, with no greater formal education, but with fundamental understanding of humanity issues and the intrinsic nature of higher spiritual value for all, as many of those leaders formed foundations with enormous amounts of money charitably given to  individuals and organizations of arts and humanities efforts.  Though the world was not perfect, these leaders of yesteryear made long standing provisions to perpetuate humanities issues long after their death in these foundations and acting in the truest form of integrity.

Our leaders of yesterday were from ordinary means, and sometimes were opportune to extraordinary circumstances for themselves in which they recognized and understood well enough to see as fortunate. And with that, a responsibility came to give back to humanity through the foundation in which they formed.

People / individuals, who helped to form the modern industrial world, had direct knowledge of war, injustice, discrimination, starvation, and every social injustice, as they worked hard at developing something better for us all as time went on.

Some of them succeeded in their efforts of human issues with foundations that lived on far past what their lives or their direct descendants’ lives would ever see.

There are still many examples in the 20^{th and 21st} century of foundations, like, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Quaker Oats Foundation, and many, many more, that understood what a world of equality for all people meant.  They employed the voice of many individuals, to demonstrate measures of equality as the foundations gave unequivocal amounts of money to support those voices and a new breed of idealism.

Unions were also a strong source of power of the individual voice, and were paid for through common efforts of common people paying dues to a Union Leader to negotiate a better opportunity.

Our voices counted, and we as an entire country learned to use our voice through a continuum of humanity’s efforts that were supported by what were the greatest leaders of the world. Many were predicted to follow in their footsteps.  Our greatest Foundations in the US have supported educational venues through: direct learning, and learning through the arts, sciences and humanities.  Our voices were heard through: movies, plays, music, television, radio, books, lectures, and much, much more.  Through these many formulas of yesterday, our notions of true equality were taught and understood. They are still taught today, yet at lesser levels, I fear, than before. With more multimedia interference and our light-speed growth in population / venues of empty content rapidly expanding as even the serious news media of today in the US has turned to an entertain me platform for most of the country.  Instead of the serious investigative journalistic measures that supplied us with first source information, we had second rate entertainment news, and the world wide web feeding our brains’ bits / bites and unscrupulous un-nutritional morsels.

From as early as the 1700′s, mass companies became effective voices in forming many government policies.  But during the 20^th century, after mass conglomerate corporations formed foundations to serve humanity efforts, more voices became validated and most important, relevant to intrinsic spiritual value. Today we have a world that looks very different if we view the many directions of sources and information of those sources coming at us at mass speeds that often are perpetuated by ratings and money.

Rather than principles, and true integrity.

Some of our cities have at least good programming for some television and some radio. Though if you take time to listen or watch the programming of public stations, they are not always the same programs in each city.  Actually, it is as good as the director of the station deems valid in programming in most cities.  And that means that the programming can only be as important as the director of the station can see.  To be fair, most of public programming is good, but let’s look at local programming.  To some of us, our programming is filled with wonderful content and as well, wonderful educational programming. Though it can be deceiving, as you view what your local station, it is often thought that others too are viewing the same programming. That is not the case. But what is more alarming is that quality programming is sparse in the relationship to all of the other media venues available to all of us today.

If we talk just a moment about video games: There is a national conference on neuron sciences every year with the DANA Foundation in Washington DC, and one researcher by the name of Gary Small, with the University of California, Los Angeles, published a 2008 study finding that young men who play violent video games have an impaired ability to recognize human facial expression. His many findings on the subject matter can be found in his book titled “ibrain”.

What does this mean? Well, this means the implications on absorption of information to our 21^st century brains are being rewired through media games. This can be understood in terms of horrific manifestations for our youth who stumble upon playing these games.  Yet the makes of the games keep making them to sell the most games and irresponsibly make profits. And this is information based on only one type of media.

We do not necessarily need better information, but in our masses internally we need better structures (venues) to teaching content laden information responsibly to humanity.  We are the thinkers and the voices of our day and into tomorrow… we have a greater need for efforts to put the content back into our every day activities.  We need better absorbed quality information on comprehensive levels that can be placed back into strategic multimedia arenas.  We need these issues to be learned by all, not just students and instructors. We need to begin to act now.

Wealth and Education in the US / Part 2 / Projections of the Future   45 minutes

Comprehension is an ever growing problem in all sectors of the educational institutions across the United States. More and more, individuals of the US do not have a complete understanding of information and the relationship of how that information pertains to all of us. Our constitutional fundamentals within the educational system must be recognizable for all of us to begin to dream about sustainable futures for the US. As all of our educational institutes must place this comprehension first and foremost on the list of what even primary educations are to be about.  Those of us with knowledge of this, we must act.

I dare to say the first educational institutes that begin to demonstrate this type of integrity to lead the way will be most famously recognizable in their human effort and will be recognized as the new leaders.  But the leaders must take part in assisting other institutions, elementary levels, and even community centers in meeting this vast assignment.

The aid of higher learning institutes have become fundamental, at elementary levels, as well as secondary levels. Not just Ivy League institutions. We need all higher learning institutions because of their expanded efforts in higher learning to give aid to our nation.

We need our major companies to put their efforts into the full recognition of humanity and equality issues in this country.  In this instance we will grow to be our greatest companies once again. In this instance, those companies will be thought of, recognized, and respected, as true world leaders. They will build great supporters of quality products, even if the cost is slightly higher. This lead will not obviously be left in the hands of companies that have mortifying results from unsophisticated, indignant, and unrefined leaders of the likes of General Motors Corporation, Exxon, Enron and many, many American companies that should hide their faces.

Our leaders of conglomerate corporations have lost their intrinsic knowledge of equality in the new world. They have acted to create mortifying effects for many.

Are we too late?

The arenas in which we learn, inside our daily lives, are often empty contents of multimedia stimuli.   The megabytes of uniformed information are long standing. It has been ongoing far before the years for most people of what is to be the time for higher learning in our colleges and four year or more stints at universities. We have this uninformed world raising our children.

Fundamental is freedom of expression, yet we have become complacent watchers from our television sets, computers, and movie seats that can no longer be considered innocent. Knowing this now, we can rebuild our society as one great society in our modern world. We can have optimism to bring the true promise lands back into the US.

At this time, we have to know, that small efforts can bring big changes and the evidence is that you are here today at a symposium sponsored by Columbia College Chicago. The next stop is to get involved.

There are some cities in this country that are much different than others and the city of Chicago is proactive in the way that they communicate to make changes needed for the community.  If the people of our cities stop using their voices, then who will be in charge?  As a whole country, we have not learned to communicate as well and illustrate peaceful equality driven change.

So now, in this modern day and in this modern world, it is the responsibility of people who know how to use their voices and their altruistic nature and talent to create at least small platforms of learning somewhere. We need you.

A recent speaker at the Chicago Public Library by the name of Howard Reich said, about his experience growing up, in his book, ‘Prisoner of Her Past”, “I didn’t know that I grew up differently than other children, and I thought that all mothers were afraid to take a shower and that no child was allowed to take a shower”, the “shower” was in reference to the fear of the gas chambers that his mother had first hand experience to in WWII.

My point is: that our different sectors of the US are growing up with very different perspectives all over the country, and in many cases all over our cities as gated communities are becoming the solution, instead of better communities everywhere becoming the solution.  Gated communities are not the solution to crime and the vast emptiness of our many venues of media entertainment.

We want to protect our children and protect ourselves. But what we really want is to protect our world.

But instead of more holistic approaches nationwide / our response to very bad times for many about: child care, education, politics, an administration of bad practices, social programs, homeless programs, and even health care, that is not yet available to all, was to just watch as if it were a movie.

We elected a former democratic president less than 12 years ago to come to our aid in health care and education issues. That democratic elect, then kept many from a direct recession but there was no comprehensive restructuring of health care insurance and education.  It was not just in one term, but two terms, that we did not comprehensively begin to find solutions.

As our parents grow into their years, and worry mostly about how they will stave off elder homes, protect their grown children, and pay for rising insurance for health care, many of them can all see that our homeless are turning into homeless communities.

Though this issue was not effectively covered in the main stream news, it has finally become apparent to all of us. Many of our families are not far from the jeopardy of financial disaster as America is living on the edge.

The property taxes pay for extra educational services direct to that specific community, leaving many communities with voids in basic education as foreclosures on homes are at a dramatic high, leaving financially safe communities with an over abundance of extra curricular educational services that are sometimes also void of the content needed for issues of equality.  With intrinsic understanding of US issues and world issues in both directions, through measures of unequivocal comprehension, the modern issues of today could be resolved as peaceful communities of higher basic education can be predominant and even fully realized everywhere.  But if we are only appropriately funding or over funding a minority of school districts, then how is that teaching our children of equality.  How can we try to teach of the constitution if our voice is not of equality for all?

We must begin to dream that this is a possibility before it can ever become a possibility.

We failed, they failed, all of us in the US have been inundated with horrific news for too long now, left and right, and as we move through it, we try to seek peace and peaceful moments where we feel safe, when we know that gradually and even rapidly the US is inflamed in even more ghastly circumstances than we can handle or even begin to comprehend might happen, though we must begin to dream of how!

We who care, though, are often busy protecting our children from what could continue to be a horrifying reality. We cannot see far enough into the future to stop building protective bubbles around ourselves and start doing a small part in building better worlds. And we must now ask our selves in the 21^st century, who are the gate keepers?

Recently, a great friend and colleague of mine in Northern California told me of a story in which I would like to share with you:  My colleague is a k-12 teacher working with second grade and third grade students.  She said that they had some new students recently (in 2008) entering the school who did not know how to use a drinking fountain.  She said, one student that she knows of, couldn’t speak to form a word.  Then telling me that the student doesn’t know how to write or even read, and literally doesn’t speak. The student was placed into the second grade and does not know how to use a pencil to draw and as it turns out, the student and several students like him have been placed in the school and have never had a home. The children have been in a homeless shelter for all of what is their life, seven years, and have never before entered any educational institution.  It was as if this child was born in a forest with no people to help to understand anything about the environment that he was born into and an environment that eventually he will have to make his way in. This child does not know how to sit at a table to eat and socialize as other children.

And if that was the worst of it, the possibility of catching up this young mind would be easy.  But the truth is, it is not just the usage of materials and knowledge of tools.  It is the knowledge of equality in the world that I wondered about. Health care, housing, playing at a play ground, climbing trees and with games at home with other children and the trauma that this poor child and his family have suffered and will suffer even more in not knowing how to maneuver in such a complicated place as many of our communities have become today.  This is one child, and now this child represents many children being assisted by many teachers who have taken on extra hours to form a team to catch up these young and valued minds so they to will have the tools to go forward in what must seem to them now, a strange and foreign and cold world.

Our leaders of yesteryear lived in big cities, in the city! As then, there was no such thing as suburbs. They were witness to many inequalities and even the horror of war times.  Some of those leaders took proactive approaches as they formed foundation, educational institutions, schools of higher thought, to support efforts of higher learning and to protect the humanity issues involved here, and into the future of the world.

The Foundations have continue to create environments within our educational system and as a whole, to educate about freedom even at elementary levels of learning through every venue that they could find possible to perpetuate the individual voice of us all in higher learning.

Let me introduce a mind set to you:  It is not new to the world to understand that television and media has become the sitters for the general population of the American homes.  Even as early as thirty years ago, we encountered this circumstance.  And I say circumstance because it has become and inevitability. Yet the morality stories of yesteryear for their time, were at least that, morality stories, that the youngest viewer could draw some idealism that was principles based.

It seems, that our modern stories of today lack the growth of principles that we may have anticipated.  Because I am speaking at an art school today among maybe our artist visionaries of today and into the future I feel it most important to say: “where has our education gone?” And, “where do the principles lie in our content of our work in modern times?”  As we begin to educate our; scriptwriters, journalists, actors, film people, music people, visual people, and the very important business personal that invade many parts of daily life today, we have an even larger responsibility as educators and as artists.  Larger, because our morality plays of the 21^st century have digressed instead of increased in its knowledge of humanity. And as a whole society of today and into the future, our needs for critical internal judgment, “critical internal thinking and action” has become greater and more complex in modern times. We have a division of learning among our higher educational institutions and their teachings, as well as, even the division of elementary levels across the board and of elementary education –v- university levels of education in the 21^stcentury we are too far away from fundamental learning.

As primary education competes with the “one dimensional coverage of often jaded sitcoms and such” of television, the sometimes violent video games, game boys, internet surfing, bleak lyrics of music for our youth, the internet’s access to violent and seduction content ridden movies, movie theaters with fast action, cheep jokes and no content, and I’m sure I missed something, there is greater faultiness of information in the content of freedom and humanity.

It is required by law that we have a driver’s license to drive a car that weighs often over a ton. Drivers still cause many accidents, yet we have no driver’s license for faulty writers, developers, directors, and production people in our most modern day that over time has had a cause and effect sort of thing happening in the world.  Manifestation of subject matter has affected all of our communities. It effects us all, and not only do we have a trickle down effect, we have a trickle up effect. It is in effect, like an accident waiting to happen around every corner of multimedia.

What could happen if we began to solve the problems and effectively put our minds of principle to work in the media arena?  Where would this dream take and entire society?

Do we truly believe and understand that the voice of Rosa Parks, one voice, in history, sparked many voices, to change the world?

Rosa Park’s voice made a difference!  And as a whole society, we can begin to believe that the quality of content of not only our education, but the quality of content in our society / one society in the US / can be met.

Realize first: we have not yet met these needs.

Then: bring all of our optimism to the table as we begin again to look at the issues clearly.

Dream: our wildest optimistic dream of what our future as one nation can be….

Wealth and Education in the US / Part 3 / A New Reality                   45 minutes

In the modern world of the 21^st century, we must find ways to use an educated voice beginning at elementary levels of learning.

The term,” it is a jungle out there” literally has manifested in much of our society today in ways that couldn’t be foreseen.

The homeless second grader that I mention in part 2, who is seven years old and has never had a home, doesn’t know how to read or write, or even drink out of the school drinking fountain, and has never had the luxury of sleeping in his own bed with his mother by his side to read a bed time story.

The reality of the jungle exists.

He has no voice because he knows not even a word. This young boy’s life, at present time is a terrible tragedy and I think about his life often…

For us here today, it is a warning and an emergency call to those of us who might also think about him and this tragedy. It is the call to the responsibility of humanity that delivers us from the inhuman. That is what is good and even great about any society, differentiating us from third-world archaic countries.

Our young boys’ silence is a silent cry for help. Understand humanity: become proactive and fight to turn tragedy into a triumphant transformation in all of our communities across the nation.  Help create our society as a whole society, that we can be proud of and find great. We should fight with every peaceful measure that we have, to the best of our ability, and act upon the behalf of this child, and all homeless families and all individuals who have not yet learned to use their voice. We have a population of homeless people that are now, turning into generations of homeless families.

The impact on their lives alone is unfathomable for most people in our country to begin to understand, let alone, begin to think about what the feasible solutions might be. That is the horror that we face.  But horror can not be simply dismissed.

Just one child / or one individual / living on the streets is one too many.

If we erase this vision from our mind and our televisions / do the families living on the street go away? According to Professor Wacquait of the University of Berkeley, they are being taken away in handcuffs and being placed in juvenile centers breeding more displaced spirits than the US has seen since the great depression.

Yale University had a recent symposium on the subject and we need more.  We need more people to understand the issues, more people to act on the behalf of those how have no voice. More educated voices please.

With this, we can begin to talk more about uncontrollable epidemic proportion of homelessness, that can and will encroach on what we think is protected. Or we can begin to talk and bring actions in resolution.

The truth is, this child in the second grade deserves the people of a great nation to be the greatest people of measures of equality.  For all people in the US.

Then we can begin again to solve world problems.

Right now there are many here in the US, that are at a critical state.

Please, writers and journalist, producers and directors, be that, the greatest people of the greatest nation.

Bring us your integrity: bring us your example of action.  Bring us your proactive ways to reverse what has turned the word, equality, into a method of empty imagery in our society. It is the individual / us / whoever you are, that must act, to continue the preservation of what constitutional equality means.

With the improved implementation of the fundamentals of intrinsic human value, our society as a whole can and will learn how to become leaders of their own lives.

Bring value to our young and elder minds. Not reform schools / forced adoption / abusive elder care.

Bring on those ideas which will bring stronger leaders in our communities and strengthen the world around us.

Let the play begin. Create a whole society through writings / imagery / music / plays / cinema and business. Help create a society we can all look after in planning together.  One voice has made a difference, yet freedom is to be maintained and nurtured.  Let our voices not be forgotten. We have comprehensive work at hand.

In a period of ten years, I have developed and implemented programs independently for universities, public and private schools, art centers, aging groups, rehabilitative groups, state programs, private organizations, and even corporations, with some of the tools of the arts that the arts have to offer. My teaching ranges from preschool to university levels. My student population has ranged from every economic level in the United States.  I found some students afraid of instructors, as adults / some students had expansive ranges of abilities and comprehension, some had a wide range of abilities with less comprehension, some had little physical ability with great comprehension, some had differences such as: selective muteness / down syndrome / autism / post traumatic stress disorder / echolalia /  cerebral palsy /  agoraphobia / developmental disabilities / and visual disabilities as well as having students with Ph.D.’s in sciences, aerodynamics, arts, history, religion, and English.

I have had students in mixed classes that do not have the ability to speak a word, but could paint and draw images that represented the media in which they saw, students that have a voice inside, yet can only echo what others say until the age of fourteen, students that speak well but have been afraid in class as I have heard stories of  Professors ripping up student work right before their very eyes.

When students took my classes, I provided expression of song and visuals. Examples of more beautiful worlds seen through masterful paintings in history, and unrestricted methods of teaching: my students began to speak from their own internal voice out loud for the first time. My experiences through arts teaching have been amazing, even to me.

I found that all of the students flourished.  Our student that only echoed, said his first word of direct expression, and two years later he as he began piano lessons. He has had public performances along side others not learning disabled.

In a shot period of time, the young bright student has learned that there is no danger in expression through any form of drawing or music that he creates and so he dares to express himself.  Through that, he has found that there is no danger in forming his own words which make up his magnificent individual voice.

There are voiceless students with autism of age 15, that not only marvelously drew from the media images that they have seen on television, but they have now learned to communicate verbally through social settings in fine art classes. Where the lessons are comprehensive enough for all, young and old, and part of the class is spent stretching to tai-chi and eating at a round table of friends. We take time out to free draw what ever our minds see and talk to each other about our week; we become listeners, too.  We snack together and talk more as we learn to socialize more. Our studies in tai-chi unify our movements for a few minutes, teach us practiced breathing methods that have been around for thousands of years.

We have also had comprehensive lessons of study in everything from circles and squares to shadow and light with cave paintings / print making / clay / mosaics / and much more. Our newly gained historical perspectives from early humanity to modern times teaches us a great deal, as well as learn more about the world that we never knew before.  The acceptance of differences in all people is learned through understanding relationships and events in art history and short segments of old musicals.

We often have mixed age groups to better comprehend the needs and intellect of others.  The success of the implementation of the arts in learning has been too great to ignore.

As I speak about wealth and education, I must include that the funding involved in some of my programs has not been readily available to just teach these programs everywhere.  I do not have a grant writer on staff, though I have had financial support by State Wide Arts Commissions and other grantors at times.  I have had funded community building classes in the arts that were also very successful.

Many of the student population I have served are underfunded in the area of arts and learning, yet the funding opportunities do exist. Solid funding is available. Excellent programming does exist, and it doesn’t stop there.

What we are really speaking of here is getting to underfunded, overfunded and everyone in between, including adults. The next step is a comprehensive plan of action.

The relevance of my programs is that the use of fine art classes to explore 20,000 years of existence, as we implement higher values within the context.  The arts allow people exploration and self-expression, helping them to form more visual and vocal projections of ideas. Within the arts and its history are an unknown number of stories of human value.

As I always say, “the arts is a whole world out there.“

Within the arts, we are allowed to express ourselves as we learn.  Through arts learning we can teach more proactive ways of living that are absorbed at fascinating rates and more fully remembered because the mind is fully engaged in arts and activity that have been developed to correlate with each other.

It’s a big world out there, and within the arts are safe places to learn and grow.  We need the arts, but more than that, we need our creative people to find a higher meaning in everything that they publicly create. We need them to create visions of whole worlds with whole values and whole forms of equality.

We need our artist today more than ever before to be visionaries.

It was here in this very school that one of the greatest historians said: ‘there was a time when artist were revered for their new and equality laden visions of what the world could be.”  This great historian for Columbia College will always be remembered in my mind as I have written him with thanks and many credits for work I have prepared.

The Greatest European Artists were painters of great cities that hadn’t yet existed, and then they were built.  It was something like this I remember. And I have seen the paintings to prove his theory.   He said: Real artist are visionaries of a better world that does not yet exist.

As the years have passed and I found children that could only draw images that they were exposed to through television / that now / because of funded art programs, interact socially and play with other children / they communicate with others on there own terms as well as draw images from real time through teaching through the arts, I still wondered.  Where are all the visionaries that paint visions of what could be? Where are all the creative people going?

What do they really want to create in the world?

Today, there are more and more children who have turned seven, and have never had their own bed or story read to them.

I’m not sure I would have anything to say to such a world if I were that child.

There was a young woman, who turned 16, and had never painted a picture because she had cerebral palsy and with that her muscles stiffen and her jaw and joints cramp, she was in a wheelchair that was controlled by her grandmother most of the time, and there was not enough money for more classes after she learned to create block prints and the history of book making and many other classes where she could view beautiful works of art exploring a world through the stories of others lives, she listened.

Her hands became full and dirty of tactile pigments and paint. And her jaw opened as she laughed. Our young woman learned five minutes of tai-chi from her wheel chair.  She listened to the movements and kept up with every muscle that she could, she remembered the breathing techniques that I often reminded her of and to stretch her fingers and open her hands.

Her grandmother held out her fingers and she wiggled them well, as she learned to relax her muscles through breathing. A year later, we had eight students in this class and as I walked gently over to each one to give personal instruction on how to use the pastels, I approached her.  Hand clinched with a fist,…

I reminded the student happily to breath and stretch out her fingers. She smiled at me, and then she practiced breathing. At that moment, her thin frail fingers opened.  I placed the pastel in her hand.  She grasped it as I’d never seen before and before my very eye, our young student had drawn so fiercely that layers of velum were beautifully coloured and even more beautifully torn.  It was her very first drawing ever at the age of 19.  She carried the humility with her from that day. And for her, it was the small dream of an accomplishment. At the end of that session, my 19 year old friend and student said very clearly while we were having a healthy snack, “I love you.”

The intrinsic knowledge of self expression holds the tools to break through to internal equality. Our successes have been measures through accomplishments of progression and active engagement levels in the class room, and programming has been developed with much thought and effort of using equality for all. We create recognition and further modeling of human equality.

All of our efforts in whole must understand more fully the tools that the arts have inside. As we use them for the many avenues of our modern multimedia living we must think.  When I was a young child that viewed a television worth watching, what I viewed taught me more closely of the constitutional freedoms that we as people have of the US today. Saturday morning cartoons, in my city taught me about enacting a bill in congress every week.

That cartoon, “I’m just a bill”, by School House Rock is now on YouTube, and was the making of something great.

We need more cartooning like that in our programming that teaches us about proactive measure, yet with the vision of letting us still be children. We need nurturing through out the nation in every venue.  We need a connection of all classes in our television story lines. We need movies that we can watch with our children that are much like the optimistic story lines of yesterday, but with a modern and more whole view of equality.

We need our people to create cities of advantage for all, not disadvantage. We need the individuals of all communities to grow up with a whole and educated voice and live in a land of visionaries in the 21^st century.

When you have kindergartners living in communities of more safe economic situations that have an instructor teaching them a second language for amusement and then in the parallels of the United States, a child in the second grade who can not speak and has been homeless for seven years of his life / then find that it is difficult to provide the later child with a language specialist, there is something very wrong.

Part Three End:

All of our children should learn at least a first language for the sake of humanity and even a second language for amusement. All of our children need the comprehensive fundamental basics to thrive, not to survive.

We need our youth to learn that all of our communities must thrive. We have to weave the dream back into every walk of life. We need you all to continue to create the land of opportunity.

Shakespeare wrote,”I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

The will of parents is to create circumstances for their children to successfully succeed in their goals and dreams. Now is the time for all of us to at least begin to think about ways to create environments for all of our children to succeed and for all of our people to thrive.

Art centers and arts in teaching have attributed to remarkable results.  We need true holistic community centers / not outreach centers.  Volunteers to teach writing, drawing, painting, cartooning, film making, photography, and the list goes on as long as the teaching holds: individualism, to innovation, to creativity, and is bound by no restrictive measure with the exception of safety and health. We need themes of morality and the purest forms of equality from you today…

Centers of schools of thought and self expression and inclusion of all, with the creative cross-disciplinary equilibrium, that can provide internal responsive thought, followed by a world of moral and conscious action.

We do have the tools, and we can dream this dream.

Just as the dream of electricity was turned into electric lamps for homes and just as we have dreamed and then took off for the moon.  With the ingenuity of a dream, we can create one great society. We have many tools and many avenues, and we already have many people who believe that our dream can turn into a reality with much work to be done.

My primary education was great some thirty years ago / in a community that was even greater. But that community has been hit by corporations going south and going out, corporations allowed by our government to use methods that should be considered slave labor. Our US policies have collapsed families and a nation, and as well all know by now, it is not just one community.

I grew up in a proactive and equality minded environment that taught pretty comprehensive learning and the understanding of action on issues.  Many of those people now will be glad to see a new tomorrow… But for now, I’d like to begin to spell out more proposed solutions.  Higher educational thought must be implemented into basic education levels to begin to make a dent in current situations in communities.

I’m not here today to talk about the higher cost of living and how it affects the nation, but it affects an entire nation. This is a call to universities everywhere across our nation to begin in what could be greater solutions and implementation of some of those solutions through demonstrations of pro-action.  We welcome: faculty / students / employees / all.

We have needed effort for our call to be heard. As costs rise in the universities, our currently recognized schools of higher learning / less and less of our population will receive what is fundamental in complete whole thoughts of knowledge. We can’t start at age 18, we need it to start at 2 years of age.  We need to give our ideas time to develop as young students. Let’s start to sustain whole and equality driven communities.

Our need for that complete or whole thought of knowledge can rapidly become greater with rapid speeds of population. Our greater need is that more people gain more proactive approaches now.  Implement the process of Bills for Better Communities.

Whole or broader thoughts of knowledge lead to better decisions. Let’s implement a whole equilibrium of equality of issues, no matter your economic or educational back ground.

Connected us all to:

media, arts, finance, humanity, history, sciences, medicine, law, ethics.

Virtual space can provide learning at rapid speeds to all communities. Key pads ready /

Pick up your phones and begin.

Use the newest tools of today / the internet and virtual symposiums on unrestricted levels for teaching basic and primary foundations back into our general population knowledge base.  It is the wave of the future.

More controls over the air waves by an educated voice is needed. Not censored, but censored for children. Monumental story telling, writing, books on tape, podcast blasts, library stations, education central…

A union of Universities across the country could be responsible for a proactive approach to flooding the internet with comprehensive and exciting lessons. The internet can engage the minds of all and teach us what many have lost. I vote no individual left behind!

Total Access / Day and Night / Complete with other Internet Venues.

Implement university television programs / and wouldn’t it be nice to just take back the air waves.

Implementing longer hours in libraries, with teaching rooms for free. Let our taxes really go to work and learn side by side.

Columbia College began this initiative at a symposium level giving a space for new platforms.

Invite other schools at all levels to do the same. Lofty press releases of new initiatives sponsored by the local news papers, radio, television, get them all on board and aware of issues. Get out those invitations to get involved…

Unity of Platforms with One Website connecting the Links across the country:

Think about and develop new tools for teaching for our k-12 teachers who need new approaches and new schools of thought and then providing them with a whole set of new and interesting intellectual and creative tools online. Not just higher education but tools for stress relief, more pro-activism, more representation, and more whole educational thought in our future.

Lists for total access of already exiting information that can be used by educators for the world wide web and better knowledge of those lists nation wide. Maybe One Site to Link All with a Moderator?

All of our communities can have access to historically important issues and why they are important…  What relevance is it all today in the US?  Our history teachers need help.  Solutions to issues can be acknowledged and acted upon. There are many primary educators of history that know the importance of issues of the past but do not always have the tools to express why history was important and what the intrinsic human value means.

If McDonald’s can sell 100 billion hamburgers in the US, our thinkers can certainly find a way to implement constitutional issues back into all of our: communities, businesses, media networks, schools, and cities over the next ten years.

Our call is very broad: universities / schools / museums / individuals, and more…

and this is a beginning.

We need well prepared material, and the full spectrum of education, with technology tools. If Google can do this, there must be a way.

Providing even our kindergarten teachers with access to higher thought processes in learning, and more tools to work with, to assist in giving all children a more promising start!

With the more readily available technology tool such as video-cams for communication services between states that are long distance (at $30.00) , tools like YouTube / which can provides remote access to planned groups / and others platforms / we can utilize the newest forums for comprehensive education, we can promote more independent studies.

Our medical doctors have called each other for expertise from state to state for years, right from their offices.  Teachers could do this with the lower price of long-distance calling or use blogging and e-mails for free.

With in depth slide show presentations across the country and even the world, we have a chance to fight fire with comprehensive knowledge.

With these tools, we could benefit all walks of life.

We have a great need for forums for business people to act with internal guidance. The need is growing so much that major universities are rethinking the BFA programs. I ask: Where are the humanities? Where are the voices of the artists in these programs or positions that create conceptual works to at least survey? Where are the Medical groups when it comes to research for better health measures for all?  Better networks and a cross disciplinary approach means more rounded ideas from individuals.  That means more complete view points.  CAAN/ that is, the Columbia College Alumni Network is set up to network in great ways / more alumni networks could provide creating a Business Forum / essentially an information network that crosses over to many areas instead of a localized area of information. This would provide many with access to professional information in all sectors / instead of one sector / after all / isn’t that what higher education is supposed to be about…

Leadership skills are lacking primarily due to less comprehensive information, and we need better provisions on much larger levels than have been predicted. The Business Forum is just an idea of course / but it could be effective. It could contain lessons of better practice for better business on the spot for many / a kind of / what works over the duration and what flies southand fails an entire economic system. This would provide everyone with knowledge to be proactive on governmental levels of interest.

Most museums are already set up with podcasts and much online technology.

Let’s turn them into cyber activity rooms inside of museums and on the internet for safe and whole places of learning for all of us.

Artists, designers, architects, advertisers, scientists, historians, sculptors, educators, business people, and the many more, we need you. We have elderly that are full of stories of triumph. We need you. Think about the content of our nation as a whole and not just in your city, share community platforms, and team with educators of all merit to begin to rebuild a new vision for a new beginning.

The cost of not acting is everything.  The cost of even small actions is nothing really and we could win this fight.

As some of our children are brought up in educationally safe environments and others are brought up without voices and sometimes without homes. I don’t think any of us want to think of that as our reality in the US.  We can change this reality.

As the population grows and children grow and become our next generation of journalists, film writers, big screen movie producers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, judges, senators, business leaders, and so on, the new wealth of the 21^st century may not always recognize the difference between gift giving and helping to create more common ground for all of America.  And that will be the greatest cost for us all.

We all want vital and terrifically thriving communities for each and every individual as to: live / to think / and to be in.  Fully engage in what makes a nation great.  Get involved with creating more platforms like this virtual symposium to provide our world with a whole approach.

I am honored to be here today, thank you very much.

artist, TRACEE PICKETT