Arts Programs Take Root Under Director’s Care

Suzanne Hackett is among the enlightened who don’t think Valley culture is an oxymoron.

In 1997, when Hackett applied for the post of executive director of the Valley Cultural Center, she wrote to the search committee: “I care about the development of the arts in the San Fernando Valley, which is where I was born, raised and initially influenced. My goal would be to help the people there . . . achieve a new understanding and appreciation of the arts in their everyday lives, particularly for those who think art is ‘not for them.’

“I have met a lot of people in my career who, while lacking a sophisticated way to talk about how they were being affected, acknowledged that the arts made their lives more interesting, their towns more beautiful and played a significant role in forming their cultural identity. I view the San Fernando Valley as a rich, diverse environment with many stories to tell the world. I would like to help make that more apparent.”

Her pitch worked. The 38-year-old Burbank native started running the center early last year. Since then, arts programs, many of them aimed at Valley youth, have been quietly proliferating with the center’s help.

As Hackett explains, the Valley Cultural Center is best known for its free summer Concerts in the Park. The series attracts more than 50,000 Valley residents and visitors every year--making it the largest cultural event in the Valley.

Money generated by the popular series now supports dozens of less high-profile arts programs throughout the community, Hackett points out. Notably, money from corporate sponsors of the concerts and funds raised through center memberships are being used for free arts programs in public schools, local boys and girls clubs and other institutions.

Last year, the center started an artist-in-residence program that puts professional performing and visual artists in local schools and youth organizations.

As a result, artist Debbi Joseph, whose specialty is textiles, has been working with pregnant teens in a Van Nuys continuation school. One result was the exhibit this week of diaper art on the Cal State Northridge campus. In Reseda, theater artist Christina Conte has been helping third-graders at Shirley Avenue School write and produce a play about their hopes and aspirations.

Ceramicist Lynette Yetter has been teaching clay fundamentals at the Vintage Magnet School in North Hills. Part of her mission has been to teach teachers how to make the best (and safest) use of the kilns there that have gone unused since the elimination of most school arts programs.

Hackett also recently placed dancer Kiha Lee at Parkman Middle School in Woodland Hills.

These residencies last 14 weeks--long enough for a child to absorb the lesson that the arts can be part of his or her life and can even be a viable profession.

“Because artists have better ideas, we have the artists propose the projects,” Hackett says. This is also important, she believes, “because we want the artists to feel that this is part of their real work.”

Hackett’s background is in museums, including the groundbreaking Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum in Las Vegas and the new California Science Museum in Exposition Park. She has done both fund-raising and program development.

Her first job in the field was as executive director of the Custer County Arts Center in Miles City, Mont., a town that makes the Valley look like a cultural hot spot.

“There were 8,000 people in our town, and 7,000 of them were members,” she recalls. “We were the only thing in town.”

If many of the members thought Charlie Russell or Frederic Remington was the ultimate artist, the museum stretched their view to include such little-known artists as Deborah Butterfield and other women artists of Montana.

“Our gallery strategy was to balance what they expected with more contemporary work,” Hackett says. “It was partially meeting people where they’re at, but having enough respect to challenge them.”

During Hackett’s tenure in the Valley, the center began asking the artists who appear at the Sunday evening concerts if they would stay over and give Monday morning performances in local schools. Many did, including the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Queen Ida and Her Zydeco Band. This summer there will be Monday morning youth concerts at the new Madrid Theatre.

Hackett also organized last year’s West Valley Arts Harvest, a gathering of 300 Valley artists and representatives from arts organizations. “It was unprecedented locally,” says Hackett, whose model was the arts “powwows” held in Montana.

The center, based in Woodland Hills, has a budget of $250,000, and Hackett and her like-minded colleagues stretch it as far as they can by partnering with other organizations.

If they have more ideas than money, Hackett doesn’t whine about it.

“I approach it as a problem to be solved creatively, rather than something to complain about,” she says. “Scarcity can do two things: It can bog you down and depress you or it can challenge you to find a solution.”