Martí used to say that art, like salt to food, preserves nations. Nurys Francisca Cantallops Borrego remembers the phrase when the El Cucalambé Professional School of Art (EPA in Spanish) embraces the last days of the current school calendar.

The director is well aware of how much effort and dedication her staff puts into achieving quality, during constructive actions that have been undertaken there since the 2022-2023 school year, and other situations that are still latent.

INSIDE

In dialogue with 26, the leader of the National Vanguard collective for more than two decades said, "Within the investments for repair, four objects of works were projected, with an approximate price of 29 million pesos. Initially, we did not have that amount of money and we started working with only one million. Due to its importance, we prioritized the kitchen-dining room, with work that included sinks, veneer, the purchase of four stoves, and the dining area, without new furniture, but with adequate lighting and doors. It is already finished and in operation, but we want to buy pots and other stoves since the ones we have purchased are not performing adequately.

"There is the area of the National Clown School, which is located inside our center. In that case, we had to repair the bathrooms and create rooms for boarding students from provinces like Holguín and Camagüey. And we tried to ensure that the dormitories, as well as two classrooms and their furniture, were in the best possible conditions.

"There are eight rooms for music specialties, which are also used by students who are trained as art instructors. The classrooms, seen from the inside, show a nice image, with new blinds, paint, electricity..., although - on the outside - they are lacking the finish.

"There are also two rooms for students of the Elementary and Middle Professional levels of Music and Dance, which are spacious. The boys' hostel was finished with a very good job and includes bathrooms and laundry rooms, where marble was used, there are curtains and the water rates are new. However, the one for the girls is still missing, costing approximately six million pesos. This work should have been completed in November and, if it is not resolved soon, it jeopardizes the start of the next school year."

The director says that the boarding children have been sleeping in classrooms improvised for that purpose, but since they do not have the ideal conditions, they have had to move to the bathrooms of the teaching area to relieve themselves during the night, next to a candle; those are obviously used during the day and must be left clean during the afternoon.

"Health specialists who supervise us insist on the solution of this problem, especially when -in the 2023-2024 course- we will welcome students from different municipalities who bet on becoming art instructors in Dance and Theater, manifestations demanded in the territory," she added.

With the sensitivity and love that characterize her, she is grateful for the concern of local authorities such as the director of Culture in the province, Darlenis Urquiola, but she urges to contribute with haste to solve this situation.

Other issues, not included in the current investment, should be remembered for future projections since we are discussing parameters that influence the quality of the processes. The small board of their theater needs repair because, although they have three in the center (one of them with problems), this is the right one for the Dance and Clown Theater. The hydrosanitary structure of the school is also affected, especially the plumbing pipes that show several leaks, with an inherent danger to health, which leads one to wonder how one can study Mozart with that smell of urine. In addition, the facility also has no perimeter fence, and the custodians and teaching guards are not enough to ensure the safety of the place.

DESPITE EVERYTHING...

With the conviction that a school is not the building, but its workers and students, the EPA has decently developed the formative processes, and on June 30 it intends to close this academic calendar. A dozen graduations in Music, for example, spoke of the interpretative quality and the integral preparation of its protagonists.

"It has been a difficult course due to the conditions that the country is going through in terms of transportation, food, and economy, in general. However, we have grown. Children have never stopped having four options in the tray, the teaching staff has been complete, seven of them joined the Master's Degree in Music and Society, as part of the categorization process today we have 20 main specialists and 27 specialist teachers, the results of Music level passes were very good, and with Dance, we continue working, supported by the Garabato Project," Cantallops affirmed.

The guide of the center with the National Shield and Sword status recognized the work of the Tres, Wind, and Piano departments, the latter with a significant weight in the fact that the province has been the most awarded in the III Amado Touza National Piano Competition, held in Santa Clara.

She also highlighted the quality of the culmination exercise of the first-year students of the National School of Clown (Acrobatics, Pantomime, and Acting), with the play Juegos Olimpiclowns, and the formation in this course of a youth symphony orchestra, which becomes a pool of talents.

In general, the 185 workers (101 teachers) and their 307 students have faced with dignity the vicissitudes to defend the teaching of art, one of the most beautiful conquests of the Revolution.