If you have ever wanted to wave a magic wand and change the world, hereโs your chance.
All you need is a ticket โ and ideally a costume โ for the Harry Potter Charity Ball on Saturday, July 28, at the Tucson Scottish Rite Cathedral, 160 S. Scott Ave.
Volunteers with the Strada Company hope Tucsonans will join in the effort to make fundraising magic for homeless students, literacy efforts and arts-related causes in Southern Arizona.
โHarry Potter is such a great story abut people who are unusual and who feel they can be empowered by their own actions as opposed to passively hoping someone fixes things for them ... and that story really resonates with people,โ said coordinator Michael Fenlason.
โThis is a really fun, dress-up event and I think people like that 100 percent of the ticket sales go to local nonprofit organizations like Youth On Their Own, Literacy Connects, the Arizona Theatre Company Teen Program and the Tucson Fringe Theater Festival.โ
Fenlason is the artistic director for the Strada Company, a local nonprofit he co-founded in 2011 with Nicole Scott and Josh Parra to support and create parity, innovation, entrepreneurship and excellence in the visual, media and performing arts. The organization is comprised of actors, writers, artists, dancers, comedians, artisans and creators seeking to advocate for the arts, create new art and leverage technologies to create and promote art.
โWe were concerned with the fact that in the performing arts in Tucson, the 20- and 30-somethings were not particularly being served as patrons or performers,โ Fenlason said.
โWe tried to look at performance art, visual art and all the arts and create opportunities for young people who are out of college or didnโt go to college and arenโt institutionally attached โ they donโt have a gallery or work with a theater company. So we created a model for an open system to help younger people create art and maybe make some money while doing it.โ
He said the nonprofit encourages diversity and welcomes people of all ages, races, religions, gender identities, political persuasions, sexual orientations and socioeconomic statuses.
Strada Companyโs unique concept has resulted in a range of programs and opportunities, including Nicoleโs Home for Wayward Girls, which offers women artists paid gigs in poetry, storytelling, dancing and singing, music and acting; the Persistence Project, which creates and invests venture capital for local women artists; a Fund for New Arts highlights Artists of the Week in diverse genres and offers support to artists. It has instituted the Strada Poetry Prize and will launch an online journal, โJink,โ this fall. The company also stages performances each year: In January, โNeverthelessโ benefitted the YWCA and Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona and Shakespeareโs โTempestโ was produced in April.
The Strada Company spearheads various fundraising projects to support local artists in their individual endeavors and this year it bought 250 spots to underwrite artists and arts-related organizations through Arizona Public Media on NPR (89.1-FM).
โWe want to make sure that organizations and performing artists that canโt afford that exposure get the chance to be seen, and we can announce performances and support them through that platform,โ Fenlason said.
Other arts beneficiaries include the Tucson Fringe Theater Festival and Arizona Theatre Companyโs Teen Program, and the Strada Companyโs philanthropic philosophy is extended to Literacy Connects through the Stories that Soar! program.
โThey give kids the chance to tell stories and have them performed by their talented crew. The notion of storytelling is important in our culture, because it is so empowering and validating ... whether through writing, video games, movies, or short films on YouTube, most of these mediums are people trying to communicate,โ Fenlason said. โLiteracy Connects does a fantastic job of teaching people how to read and tell stories themselves.โ
Fenlason said the Strada Company is equally happy to support Youth On Their Own, which provides dropout-prevention support for homeless and near-homeless students.
โLast year we served more than 1,700 unique kids, which was an 8 percent increase in students served over the prior year, and we anticipate serving at least that many in 2018-2019,โ said Bethany Neumann, Youth On their Ownโs director of development. โThe need has only gone up and we donโt know if that is because more students need our services or there are more students accessing our services. We are happy to help as many students as possible, so every donation really counts.โ
Neumann said third-party fundraisers such as the Harry Potter Charity Ball are essential because they help to raise much-needed funds while also promoting awareness about the reality for students who struggle to stay in school while unaccompanied or homeless. These students often fly under the radar by staying with friends or family members; many have left home due to physical, sexual or substance abuse and violence, while others face abandonment due to poverty or parental incarceration.
โIt is really helpful to get the word out to businesses, churches, and social and service groups and other organized networks so folks can help others to understand the need out there and see that there is an organization in Tucson to help fill that need,โ Neumann said.
