With members of the Sacramento arts community, the local education establishment and a representative of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at his side, Mayor Kevin Johnson Friday morning announced a major new arts education initiative in Sacramento. Sacramento has been chosen from 27 cities to be the Kennedy Center's first civic partner for the "Any Given Child" program, an effort to match arts groups, school districts and the Kennedy Center itself in the promotion of arts pr... davidwattsbarton Ronald West 2009-10-12T16:16:32Z 2009-10-12T16:16:32Z

“It’s especially great to be in a city where the mayor shares the ideals of President Kennedy that the arts are so crucial to a healthy society.” – Michael Kaiser, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Reported by the Sacramento Bee: Kennedy Center officials said they chose Sacramento out of 27 interested cities from around the country in part because of the city's For Art's Sake initiative, started by Mayor Kevin Johnson. That initiative has worked to coordinate local arts organizations and has formed committees working on arts education, funding, facilities, marketing and film.

Ronald West 2009-10-12T16:16:32Z Rhonda Erwin 2009-10-10T01:29:19Z 2009-10-10T01:29:19Z

This is nice and for goodness sake he didn't need a strong mayor proposal to get it done but he -as always - wanted and needed camera's to have it told. And I'm not knockin him for that. One thing for sure I've seen so many do so much but perhaps they should have sent out media releases so people would know just what they did or are doing. Heck, Sierra Health Foundation has given MILLIONS annually for youth/ youth programs (when Fargo was Mayor) but their wasn't much attention to their deeds but the people in the cmmunity (and especially those who received the grants) knew about it. And surely other Mayors didn't have so many spokespersons, assistants, advisors and campaign managers to assist in the labor. Seems we don't need a strong mayor proposal we actually needed a Mayor who had more help. But again this is nice for the youth. And hopefully IF he gets his dream of a strong mayor form of government it won't turn into a nightmare for community members as he slows up on labor because he (they) got what they wanted. But well done, did I miss it? On September 14th SacBee ran a story 'Sacramento Mayor Johnson aids arts fundraising" Key word "AIDS" Seems Sharon Gerber (the one receiving the biggest chunk $40,000 - for her part-time salary- of the contributed "For Arts Sake" funding) earned her pay. But their is no mention of her by Johnson in the article. (kind of like the youth / gang summit where so many others did the labor and Johnson showed up - to say cheese- take credit- when camera's were rolling) Surely a woman --named Arts Liaison- with such an impressive resume, founder of the local event planning firem Six Degreez, Inc., sits on the board of KVIE and the Sacramento Hotel Corporation, a Land Park resident (Kennedy's School District) worked for Wells Fargo for 16yrs in a variey of entrepreneurial positions hired to facilitate relationships in the Art community deserves to be mentioned. Oh, but wait that would take some of the shine from Johnson, needed for his strong mayor victory.

Rhonda Erwin 2009-10-10T01:29:19Z