Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens
PROGRAMS
Casa Romantica - Education
Casa Romantica conducts topical seminars, workshops and related engagements that are meaningful for the community. Educational speakers, hands-on experiences and wellness demonstrations provide visitors with the ability to expand their horizons and try something new. Featured subjects encompass California history, local culture, sports interests, public figures, and characteristics of the local environment, to name a few. Political speechwriting, cooking demonstrations, discussion of whales and local marine life, tile glazing workshops, the history of Mexican-American baseball, an arts education panel – these are some of the highlights of recent and upcoming engagements. Casa Romantica endeavors to introduce new topics and programs that continue to pique the interests of members of the community.
Casa Romantica seeks to engage citizens of the community in programs that provide educational opportunities on relevant topics of interest. Speakers, educational seminars, and hands-on workshops comprise the cultural calendar throughout the season. Success is measured through tracking attendance and measuring increased levels of engagement for members of the community.
Casa Romantica - Performing Arts
Casa Romantica's Performing Arts encompass the pinnacle, headline programs offered to the community. Casa Romantica hosts an array of performing arts throughout the season. Dramatic plays, musical concerts, and dance performances, each utilizing the distinctive space of Casa Romantica to provide guests with a completely unique experience. These events are commissioned, ticketed engagements featured year-round, incorporating an array of themes and genres intended to attract varying demographics within the community. Casa Romantica strives to continually innovate programming intended to reach wider audiences each and every year.
Casa Romantica engages thousands of members from the community in its ticketed engagements. Participation has grown significantly over the past several years, and strategic plans encompass a focus on innovating programming to continue to attract newer, wider audiences.
Casa Romantica - Visual Arts
Casa Romantica’s historic property is itself a living, breathing gallery. The walls of every room are lined with historic photographs depicting the history of the community. Architectural preservation enhances the ability for visitors to transcend time and imagine what life was like for the original residents of the bluff top estate. Antique furniture, artifacts, fixtures and details each convey an intricate story all on their own. The property at Casa Romantica has a separate building that serves as a dedicated art gallery. Throughout the year, Casa Romantica invites select visual artists to display their works for the public to view and enjoy. Lauded painters, photographers, and sculptors alike have showcased their impressive pieces. These visual curations are each presented for a specified duration, open to the public for all to enjoy, and are reflective of the diverse community of Orange County and its surrounding areas, as Casa Romantica has featured the works of artists from Baja California, Catalina Island, and Rwanda.
Casa Romantica is the only cultural center of its kind in South Orange County. The organization is committed to engaging the community in programs that emphasize the arts, and exposing citizens of San Clemente and beyond to a diverse sampling of arts and culture and related programs. The goal is first to increase interest about the arts; further, the intended outcome is to inspire people - including school-aged children - to developed increased skills and aptitude that translate into greater success and livelihood, for themselves, their families, and the community as a whole.
Casa Romantica - Horticulture
Casa Romantica’s coastal gardens are integral to the beauty and magnificence of the property. Sadly, in April of 2023, 70% of the lush, thematic landscapes, featuring hundreds of native trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and herbs were lost in a landslide. Althouh hundreds of tropical ferns, blooming succulents and exotics of Casa Romantica’s gardens continue to delight visitors and guests – including Casa Romantica’s own Butterfly Garden, home to indigenous populations of butterflies who congregate and flourish every year. Much work is needed to completely restore the gardens to their former beauty which included botanicals meticulously selected and maintained in order to fully represent the tremendous environmental splendor of the Southern California coastline in an effort to encourage our members to incorporate water-wise plants into their own home gardens, thus upholding our environmental education initiative of conservation.
The gardens of Casa Romantica are an integral component of the heritage of the historic home. A key element of Casa Romantica's mission is sharing the cultural heritage of California with its visitors; part of that heritage includes the local environment, native plant species, and indigenous insects and wildlife. Garden staff and volunteers work hard to ensure integrity of the gardens, as well as provide the ultimate experience for every visitor who travels through the gardens at the historic home.
Casa Romantica - "Casa Kids"
“Casa Kids” represents the heart of Casa Romantica's mission - service to underprivileged children. Casa Romantica provides many programs specially tailored for school-aged children in the community. Environmental field trips, weekly story time readings, annual children’s art gallery exhibit, free monthly family Sundays with historical tours and crafting activities, a summer dance workshop, and a summer music festival and academy – all offered free of charge. Due to budget cuts in schools and lack of parental financial resources, children increasingly do not have access to artistic education, making Casa Romantica's efforts and programs powerful in the cultivation of the next generation of leaders in the arts, humanities, sciences, and the community.
There is extensive research attesting to the importance of providing children with access to arts education – some highlights of which are as follows:Young Children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory versus children who do not receive musical training (Dr. Laurel Trainor, 2006).Children who study a musical instrument are more likely to excel in all of their studies, work better in teams, have enhanced critical thinking skills, stay in school, and pursue further education (Arte Music Academy, "Statistical benefits of music in education," 2014).Music education correlates to higher SAT scores (1999 College-Bound Seniors National Report).According to the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, music students received more academic honors and awards than non-music students.Music lessons enhance spatial reasoning performance (University of California, Irvine, Study 1994).
CONTACT
Casa Romantica Cultural Center and Gardens
415 Avenida Granada
San Clemente, CA 92672
Phone: 949-498-2139