The pail was full of shaving cream sprayed with watercolors.

Jade Lumbi, 5, dipped a sheet of white cardboard into it. Then an aide at the arts workshop of the Miami Children's Museum wiped the lather off with a spatula.

Jade's eyes widened, and so did her smile, when she realized she had created an abstract painting.

``I like art. I like colors and markers,'' said Jade, who lives in Aventura.

By staining her hands with watercolors, Jade embraced a cultural experience. Miami-Dade children enjoy two million such experiences each year, according to the county's Department of Cultural Affairs.

Children regularly exposed to art are high-achievers, several studies show.

Emotionally, they adjust better to life than children who are denied an arts experience.

Now threatened cutbacks in funding for cultural institutions in Miami may leave thousands of children without an opportunity to explore their potential through the arts.

``The result is a higher rate of crime,'' said Modesto Abety, president of the Miami Children's Trust. ``We are raising incomplete persons who have no appreciation for self-expression or art.''

As a hefty budget deficit forces the county to tighten its belt, the assault on culture is a pox on the city's soul. The proposed $11 million reduction in the Cultural Affairs budget will require ``the elimination of nearly all of the department's grants for cultural organizations,'' wrote agency director Michael Spring to 400 groups that get grants.

THEATER THREATENED

Among them is the Roxy Theater Group, a nonprofit that gives theater, voice and dance lessons to 550 kids from low-income families in West Miami. Without the county's $100,000 grant, 150 children will lose their scholarships.

Why should you or I care? Because most juvenile arrests occur between 3 and 6 p.m., before parents return home. It is the time when most children experiment with drugs and sex for the first time, leading to teenage pregnancy.

Some children are motivated to go to school only because classes are followed by recess, allowing them to express themselves. The arts are also a way to bring parents into contact with their children's education, because they won't want to miss the play or the arts show or the choir performance.

Miami-Dade County's school system has practically eliminated every component of arts education. If, on top of that, the county cuts the funds for institutions that develop children's talent, what is left?

CRUEL IRONY

The irony is that the county is investing $1 billion in arts facilities, including $452 million approved by voters in Building Better Communities capital funding.

So these funds do not come from general revenues (property taxes) in the operating budget. And, by law, they are earmarked for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and the future Miami Art Museum and the Science Museum at Bicentennial Park.

Still, the question looms:

``As we invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build new cultural facilities, it is equally important to ask whether the groups who'll occupy them will survive to use them,'' Spring said.

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