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| University pledges $1
mil for Neighborhood Arts Center by Anna Talman Assistant News The University announced Monday that it plans to build a million dollar community arts center in the North End neighborhood of Middletown as part of a community renewal project in the area. The Green Street Arts Center, as it will be called, will be housed in the former Saint Sebastian School at 55 Green Street, just East of Main Street in the North End. The center will focus on arts instruction for children and adults, with programs in music, dance, and visual arts including photography and video. The building will also be an artistic home for artists and arts ensembles from the neighborhood. “We want to be the artistic home for ‘home-grown,’ neighborhood-grown ensembles,” said Center for the Arts (CFA) Director Pamela Tatge, who is in charge of the project. Tatge said that the Green Street Arts Center will ultimately also sponsor apprenticeship programs targeting middle and high school youth, teaching them employable arts such as graphic design, video editing, sound recording and photography. Tatge said that the project is also a boon for the University. “Really this is the moment for Wesleyan to be involved, and it will be an extraordinary opportunity for our students who are by nature active and concerned to have a place to channel their interests in community involvement, and we’re really excited to offer this experience as part of the Wesleyan community; that that is part of what they would get is this interaction with our community…I think for Wesleyan to be involved in a leadership capacity is fantastic,” Tatge said. Sociology Professor Rob Rosenthal agreed. “First it’s good just in terms of what happens to Middletown. What happens to Main Street, what happens to the North End affects Wesleyan in a variety of ways…it’s a good policy for Wesleyan to be a good neighbor,” he said. According to Tatge, the Ferry Green and Rappallo area, where the center will be constructed, has a history as a rough neighborhood. “It has historically been a transient neighborhood with high drug traffic, lots of businesses that have closed, definitely the most depressed area of Middletown,” Tatge said. Green Street, where the new arts center will be, runs perpendicular to Main Street towards Route 9, on the other side of Washington from the center of the University. Tatge said that recently the neighborhood has undergone a “renaissance,” spearheaded by the work of the North End Action Team (NEAT), which was formed in 1997. “NEAT is a group of community members taking ownership and becoming empowered to do something for the betterment of their community,” Tatge said. Rosenthal has been involved in NEAT’s efforts to rejuvenate the North End. “We’ve been making an effort to see how to redevelop the area without gentrifying it,” Rosenthal said. Beginning in January 2000, in a study conducted by the Yale School of Urban Studies, residents were asked about what they thought would revitalize their neighborhood. They responded that a community art program would help the neighborhood. “[Residents] expressed that they wanted things for their children to become engaged in…and they wanted the vitality that the arts bring to the community,” Tatge said. She said that the Green Street program will build on an already strong arts community in the neighborhood. The North End is already home to two community arts organizations, The Buttonwood Tree, on Main Street and Oddfellow’s Playhouse, on Washington Street. The arts center will target residents of the North End, as well as serving residents of other Middletown neighborhoods, the Wesleyan community and suburban areas. Tatge emphasized that the program was first and foremost a neighborhood endeavor. “We want to serve the neighborhood first,” she said. She noted that a large scholarship fund will be established to allow for a sliding pay scale for programs at the new center. She said that local children will be invited to join an after-school program, which will unite kids normally bussed to three different elementary schools, in an arts focused after-school program, which would also include a mentorship program. The University has applied for a Leadership Gift from the city of Middletown in an effort to raise the expected $1 million for the building renovation. Tatge said that the planning group has also appealed to several private foundations for matching grants. Tatge said that $1 million is a modest amount to complete a plan of this scale. She said that it will cost roughly $60 per square foot to renovate the 12,000 square foot building – a cost which Tatge said is relatively modest. Presently, the city of Middletown leases the building to the University for $1 per year. Tatge said she hopes that the Green Street Arts Center will be completed by the beginning of 2004. The CFA, which will undertake the management of the program for at least five years, until it can evolve into a community-owned, non-profit organization, will hire a director for the arts center this fall. “My dream, would be to take this year to fundraise, next year to build, and open conceivably as early as September ’03, but more realistically, probably in January of 2004,” Tatge said. The University’s involvement with this project, however, is already in full swing. “We’re hoping to have a number of activities over the next year, even before we have a home, so we can build the relationships and build the demand…this kind of project has to grow from relationships,” Tatge said. Rosenthal noted that Wesleyan students will play a major role in developing the Green Street Arts Center. “There’s definitely a place for students to get involved in a number of ways,” he said. There will be an information session for students interested in the arts center project on March 5 at 4:30 in Zilkha classroom 106. |
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