BEWARE WHAT YOU SET YOUR HEART UPON.
For it surely shall be yours.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
GYO VISION
My vision for the Gifford Youth Orchestra is a Performing Arts Theater in Gifford, Florida. A place to call home that is really its own home, with enough rooms, closets, filtered water system, practice rooms and performance stage. A place to live with all the right recording equipment, PA systems, studio facilities, and movie theater capabilities. A home with fabulous bathrooms, kitchens, windows, elevators, and a lobby that is comfortable and chairs that are wonderful, and a perfect air conditioning system. A place that is totally conducive to Orchestra performances, Youth Choir performances, piano recitals, plays, public speaking, African American drama and dance, Hispanic drama and dance, and other unusual and unique drama and dance, and all the community center rights and privileges.
BELONGING
How to describe the feeling of entering a space that takes your breath away from images and sounds and feelings of belonging. To see art that sings to you of your heritage…and how it plays a part in the bigger picture of humanity. To hear classical music that moves your soul…and to know that it influenced generations of composers yearning to share their story. To be pummeled by dialogue that leaves you raw with emotion…and to know that it gave voice to countless minds.
COLLABORATING
I have a vision of collaborating to create something else that is beautiful in Gifford. An architect’s dream. A cultural center that would put us on the tourist map, the chamber of commerce map, and the cultural arts map. A home with the perfect staff to operate such a fabulous facility, creating jobs of pride in the community.
NEXT JEWEL
I see this performing arts center as the next jewel in Gifford that brings people across the bridge into Gifford and invites more interaction with the cultural community of Vero Beach and Indian River County and the world. A Cultural Arts Disney World that belongs to Gifford and helps educate people inside and outside Gifford to the beauty of its history, and the history of its ancestors.
PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
A Performing Arts Center…be it one-room or a complex of many rooms…should embrace each individual with the warmth and hospitality of home, while introducing vistas of the unknown. Students experimenting with avenues of expression that might be foreign to them, that they never knew could open up doors and windows to the past and future. Learning how to read music…how to hold an instrument correctly…how to capture an audience’s attention with nothing more than words…perfecting a pirouette…hearing your voice soar to the rafters and beyond.
AFRICAN AMERICA
I see the walls of this edifice (and the walls of Gifford) being an African American living history book where students and teachers and others can come to study Pan African history in a memorable, interactive, and unbelievably enjoyable manner. A place where racial healings can take place. Where pride in community can be enriched. My dream is that our Mission Statement soar beyond our wildest imagination doing the most good for the most people in a most magnificent manner!
REFUGE
I envision the GYO as being a refuge from the mundaneness that can blunt the creative energy that lies dormant in many. Not a place to hide, but a place that encourages exposing the talent within. And a place where any child can walk in and know that they are welcomed and loved…and that they matter.
Bujol’s Vision Statement for GYO
Written May 2012
First Made public in the John’s Island Grant Application (September 2016)