SCFD Funding!

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Funders_SCFD_Logo-vertArt from Ashes was awarded SCFD funding for 2014/2015 from three counties: Adams, Arapahoe and Denver.

Funding will be used for programs and operational support. Thank you, taxpayers for supporting the arts and sciences in Colorado!

Since 1989, Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD) has distributed funds from a 1/10 of 1% sales and use tax to cultural facilities throughout the seven-county Denver, Colorado metropolitan area. The funds support cultural facilities whose primary purpose is to enlighten and entertain the public through the production, presentation, exhibition, advancement and preservation of art, music, theatre, dance, zoology, botany, natural history and cultural history.

Out Front Power Party

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Franklin Cruz, PJ Sykes and Catherine O’Neill Thorn represented Art from Ashes at the Out Front third annual Power Party! Thanks Jerry and JC, owners of Out Front, for the invitation. Stay tuned for YouTube performances!

Art from Ashes deemed one of the top 50 youth arts organizations in nation

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nahypAfA was named a Finalist for the prestigious President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities 2013 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award. In the certificate from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, Art from Ashes is noted as “one of the top arts and humanities-based programs in the country.” The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities “bridges the interests of federal agencies and the private sector, supports special projects that increase participation and excellence in the arts and humanities and helps incorporate these disciplines into White House objectives under our Honorary Chairperson First Lady Michelle Obama.”

If Only You Would Listen

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Shiloh Michels, 17
“In the workshops, everyone opens up to each other because we don’t have to be the person that others ‘expect’ us or need us to be. We can just be ourselves and support each other.”

Shiloh Michels3-Minute Poem: If Only You Would Listen

Dear Mother, Mother.
Have you ever heard me cry?
Scream to myself late at night?
Do you even know that I am gay?
Will you accept me anyway?
All I want to do is run away.
Forget everything that you say.
Sing a song I once heard.
Maybe it will ease the pain.
Maybe we’ll find out another day.
Before it becomes too late.

It’s time I spoke

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3-Minute poem by Chasity, 17 (in residential treatment)
It’s time I spoke

I was told I was fat and ugly, because I didn’t
look like the girls on TV or in magazines.
Why should we? Why do we even try?
I used to try to be like them,
but now I love myself
for who I am inside and out
without a doubt,
because we are all beautiful
in our own way.
We don’t have to change for anyone,
we just have to be ourselves.
Being ourselves is the best thing
that you can do and/or be.
If we doubt ourselves or who we are,
we will never know who we will be
and/or become.