After producing his third, full-length children's album, David Sharpe (PapaHugs) was nominated for his first ever Grammy Award for best original children's album. Previous winners include the "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" soundtracks, as well as The Muppets, Dan Zanes and many more.

This year saw the launch of ArtSPARK, one of the largest, most comprehensive arts education programs in the country. This year will see more than 16,000 3rd and 4th graders - 40 percent of the 3rd and 4th graders in the county - attend music and theater performances. When the program reaches full maturity, it will reach every 3rd through 6th grader in the county every year or more than 90,000 kids per year!

ZERO1 is the first organization in Silicon Valley to converge art and technology. It's also the first to produce a Silicon Valley-based contemporary arts biennial. In three iterations, the ZERO1 Biennial has become North America's premier biennial of art and technology; it has showcased the work of 500 artists from 50+ countries, commissioned 80 original artworks, and attracted 100,000 attendees. It's also yielded many firsts such as the "altered" landscape of San Jose's City Hall Rotunda — from the psychedelic patterns by Akira Hasegawa in 2006 to the morphing, organic forms by Craig Walsh that invaded its interior in 2008.

First public access awards show for public access shows/programs. The second awards show will be held at the California Theater in Downtown San Jose on January 7, 2012.

Barbara Day Turner is founder (1991) and Music Director of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, the first S.J. ensemble to receive three ASCAP/League of American Orchestras Adventurous Programming awards. With five youth orchestras and over 110 commissioned new works, many by local composers, her work with SJCO is shared globally through these works, reflecting the creativity and artistic vision of Silicon Valley. Choosing to make San Jose her home, she is a music director at a local church. Since receiving the California Arts Council Maestro Apprentice Award, she remains an active guest conductor of opera, symphony and music theatre nationally and internationally.

I would Like to nominate San Jose's Christmas in the Park as our very own “gem.” It is the largest city-displayed, Christmas-theme in Northern California. First started in 1949 By Lima Mortuary and donated to the City of San Jose.

1st Decade! Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Symphony Silicon Valley has continued the long tradition of professional orchestral music in San Jose. Shortly after the demise of the San Jose Symphony (first symphony west of the Mississippi!), SSV has kept the music playing for 10 exciting years.

Angels on Stage is a new nonprofit theatre troupe for children with disabilities, ages 5-22. Entering its fourth season, AoS serves 100 angelic performers with a wait list of 20+. The vision is to take this model nationwide to be the Special Olympics model of musical theatre.Fleetwood Mac's breakthrough album, Fleetwood Mac came In 1975 a year after former San Jose State University students Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band. Among Nicks' contributions to Fleetwood Mac was the song "Dreams", which became the band's only Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit single to date.

Kay Ryan was the United States Poet Laureate 2008-2010 - born in San Jose, California, September 21, 1945. She was raised in the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert, attended Antelope Valley College and received her master's degree in English from UCLA. She taught English part time at the College of Marin in Kentfield. While her collection, "Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends" was privately published in 1983 with the help of friends, she found a publisher for her second collection "Strangely Marked Metal" in 1985. Her work went largely unrecognized until the mid 1990s when some of her poems were anthologized and the first reviews in national journals were published. She became widely recognized following her receipt of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004. She published her sixth collection of poetry " The Niagara River" in 2005. In 2008, the U.S. Library of Congress announced that Ryan would be the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant for a one year term, but she received a second term ending in May 2010.

Cinequest was the first film institute to prove a comprehensive U.S. distribution solution in 2006 for festival films — including DVD, internet, TV and select theatrical releases. Cinequest was also the first independent distributor to engage in direct internet-to-TV distribution, the first to enable online downloads of feature films in DVD/HD quality in 2004, the first to present online festival in conjunction with live festival in 2004, allowing film lovers around the globe to view festival features, now a common festival practice, the first festival to bring short films to handheld mobile devices in 2004 and the first festival to accept all digital film formats and to project digitally in all screens in 2000 at Cinequest 10.

San Jose's first known resident, and perhaps the city's oldest, a 14,000 year-old Columbian mammoth fondly named Lupe after the river in which she was discovered serendipitously by a local man, Roger Castillo, while walking his dog Jenna. Today, Lupe lives at Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, where she has inspired many firsts, including the museum's first natural history exhibit, Mammoth Discovery!, of which she is the centerpiece and its first public projection art piece with acclaimed artist JD Beltran (on view now, visit www.cdm.org/portal).

Theodor Uppman was the first and only baritone born in San Jose who sang at the MET for many years.

Kay Ryan was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2008-2010. She was the first poet Laureate born in San Jose - in 1945.