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Mesa Arts Center reconnecting with the city

BY ALLI CRIPE

Tribune Contributor

After more than a year, Mesa Arts Center is reconnecting with the community in person as masks become optional June 24 at all city buildings.

The center recently released its lineup for its Fall 2021-Spring 2022 season that will include live audiences watching live performances on stage. And its staff has set up four neighborhood workshops to generate feedback for its annual Prototyping Project.

Cindy Ornstein, Mesa arts director and the center’s executive director, said the pandemic forced her staff to turn to video productions and ingenuity to keep a cultural-artistic connection with residents.

“One nice thing about being an organization that’s all about engaging people with creativity is that we have a lot of great creative people on staff,” said Ornstein.

The center turned a theater into a video production unit to develop digital content, not only for the center but also for the i.d.e.a. Museum and the Arizona Museum of Natural History.

“We created a wide variety of digital programming,” said Ornstein. “Creating some hands-on activities and virtual tours of exhibitions that were now no longer open to the public so that people could still enjoy them.”

Even while shut down, the arts center still offered online classes and its special engagement program for veterans.

Arts center staff found they were reaching people they had never reached before – such as the homebound or and even people living out of state.

“We got one email from an arts and services participant,” Ornstein said as her eyes teared up. “And I always get choked up because the subject line was, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’”

The center didn’t stop there.

It offered curbside pickups for family engagement projects and window-side exhibits.

“We had space all along the entire theatre building,” Ornstein explained. “So, we asked Mesa Contemporary to mount an exhibition in the windows.”

From September to January, ‘Distanced but not Separated’ was the title of this windowed exhibit with work by artists associated with the Mesa Arts Center’s studio programs.

The exhibit was still display as the museums started to open. In October, the Arizona Museum of Natural History and

The Mesa Prototyping Festival features work developed by artists in response to neighborhood feedback during workshops held by Mesa Arts Center sta . (Tribune fi le photo) i.d.e.a Museum opened with limited capacity and timed entries. In December, Mesa Contemporary Art Museum opened with the same guidelines. Classes opened in January and in September, the theatres will open again.

This month, the Mesa Arts Center started reconnecting with the community in person through the Mesa Prototyping Project.

“It’s based on the idea of trying to give communities the opportunity to experiment with ideas,” said Ornstein. “To make their neighborhoods more activated and more connected.”

The goal is to get the ideas of the community for temporary art installations.

This year, Mesa Arts Center will host group workshops in different Mesa neighborhoods before the Prototyping Festival on Nov. 13.

The Mesa Prototyping Festival features temporary installations created in response to neighbor comments and feedback collected during community walks. The installations will be available for community interaction during the oneday festival in downtown neighborhoods southeast of Mesa Arts Center. The �irst workshop for getting feedback for the festival will be at 6 p.m. July 8 at the Catholic Charities Care Campus, 466 S. Bellview, Mesa.

Others are 9 a.m. Aug. 15 at Que Chevere, 142 W. Main St.; 9 a.m. Sept. 19 at New Horizon School, 446 E. Broadway Road; and 6 p.m. Oct. 15, Mesa Urban Garden, 212 E. 1st Ave.

Orstein is excited that staff can now reach out to people beyond a digital landscape and engage them in workshops that have food, drinks, local artists and music.

“It helps people meet each other, see their neighbors, and feel more connected,” said Ornstein. “Empowering the people to have a voice and make the community better.”

THE MESA TRIBUNE | JUNE 20, 2021

EV woman’s book looks at doctors, parents

TRIBUNE NEWS STAFF

The experience of caring for her chronically ill son for 15 years has motivated a Chandler woman to coproduce a book on physicians’ relationships with parents.

Ann F. Schrooten of Fox Crossing and pediatrician Barry P. Markovitz co-edited “Shared Struggles,” a collection of �irstperson stories that provide a unique glimpse into how parents and physicians think, feel, and interact.

Schrooten and Markovitz also wrote commentaries on each story to provide “an independent perspective on the events and messages conveyed and to encourage re�lection, inquiry and discussion.”

The stories are grouped under four sections: hope, compassion, communication and trust.

Parents write about interactions with physicians that had a signi�icant impact on them and their child and offer context and insight. The physicians tell of interactions with patients and families that served as learning moments in their career and humanized both medicine and the doctor.

Schrooten, an attorney, and her husband Mark – who have two daughters – lost their son Jack at age 15 in 2014 and knew Markovitz from the pediatrician’s involvement in her son’s care.

“After my son died, Barry reached out to me with the idea of writing a book together, but we developed what we wanted the

book to look like together,” she said. She said Markovitz spent many months caring for Jack in 1999 in St. Louis and the doctor helped manage ventilator care for the child, who was only seven months old. Jack was born with a rare congenital muscular dystrophy that affected his muscles, eyes and brain. Markovitz was “always available to help me when it came to issues with Jack and offered guidance and support as much as he could from a distance” and even spoke at the boy’s funeral. In writing the book, Schrooten recruited the parents and physicians who contributed. Her commentaries on each story re�lect a parent’s viewpoint while Markovitz supplied a physician’s perspective. Finding the parents came from her Chandler resident Ann T. Schrooten holds a photo involvement in a large network she de-of her son Jack, who died at age 15 after a life-long chronic illness. (Special to the Tribune) veloped by participating in online forums for parents with intensive medical needs. “Parents and physicians were overwhelmingly supportive of the book and wanted to be part of it,” she said, adding they collected stories from 2015 to last year. And it was a long road to fruition.

They had �irst discussed the idea of a book in 2014 but their proposal wasn’t accepted until 2019, when Springer Publications gave it a nod. They �inished in December and the book was published two months ago. Noting that over 3 million children in the United States live with complex medical conditions “and, with advances in medicine, this number will only grow as children born with rare and life-limiting conditions live longer,” Schrooten hopes the book will bene�it both parents and doctors. “The hope is to help physicians understand the perspective of parents of the medically complex children they care for and to help parents understand the perspective of the physicians who care for their children,” she said. “There can often be a feeling of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ when it comes to parent-physician interactions. “By giving a voice to both parents and physicians, and by listening and learning from their stories, the goal is to create a bridge to better understanding that can improve communication, minimize con�licts, and foster trust and compassion among physicians, patients, and families.” “Shared Struggles” is available on amazon.com and at link.springer.com/book/1 0.1007%2F978-3-030-68020-6. 

Mesa Public Library resumes evening hours

TRIBUNE NEWS STAFF

Mesa libraries have extended their hours as the popular summer reading program hits high gear.

Hours are now 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. Branch, 635 N. Power Road and Dobson Road to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Main Library, 64 E. 1st St.; Red Mountain Branch, 2425 S. Dobson Road.

With updated COVID-19 guidelines, masks are optional at city libraries and recreation centers, but building occupancy may be limited. Public computers are available with one-hour reservations, but meeting and study rooms are not available.

Park and pick-up curbside service is available at all locations by appointment through the myLIBRO app from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Available library materials can be requested through the app, with noti�ication provided for pick up.

The extended hours come at a time when the summer reading program up and running strong.

The countywide program encourages people of all ages to read at least 20 minutes a day.

The theme of this year’s program is “Tails & Tales,” urging readers to explore the many stories of the animal kingdom by reading, completing challenges and attending virtual events and participating in community experiences.

“Most people don’t realize that our Summer Reading Program is open to adults as well as children. We want to make summer reading a family affair and encourage parents to join in on reading with their kids,” Mesa Library Director Heather Wolf said.

“After the year we have had and the interruption to learning that our children have experienced, reading over the summer is even more important to keep up their reading �luency and comprehension skills.”

The program plays a vital role in helping to reduce the “Summer Slide” or the learning loss experienced while transitioning between school years.

Studies have shown that students who participate in a summer reading program have better reading skills at the end of the third grade and score higher on standardized tests than students who do not participate.

Summer reading loss is also cumulative. By the end of 6th grade, children who consistently lose reading skills over the summer will be two years behind their classmates. Reading just �ive books over the summer can prevent summer reading loss, according to experts.

Participants in the Summer Reading Program earn one point per minute for reading physical or electronic books or listening to audiobooks. Additional points are earned by attending virtual events hosted by librarians and completing online library challenges.

Prizes are based on the number of points readers achieve. Pre-readers and kids up to age 12 who achieve 500 points receive restaurant coupons while all ages who accumulate 750 points earn an Arizona State Parks Pass.

Anyone reaching 1000 points can choose a free book or donate it to a local Head Start classroom. Prizes and coupons are based on availability and subject to change due to the pandemic.

Grand prize drawings will also be held for a Phoenix Zoo prize bundle, Harkins Theatres pack, a Sea Life Aquarium package for a family of four and a Legoland Discovery Center Family 4-Pack.

Mesa’s Summer Reading Program continues through Aug. 1. To register, visit mesalibrary.org/events/summer-reading.

For more information, visit mesali-

brary.org. 