Every afternoon, scores of kids arrive at Green Street Arts Center (GSAC) from vans and school buses, have a snack and start working on homework. University students, like Emily Troll ’10, also drop by to tutor and act as teaching assistants in art classes.
“I found it to be a great home away from home, having a bunch of little brothers and sisters to hang out with at the after school program,” Troll said.
In the North End, a neighborhood affected by the stigma of poverty and crime, the average household income is $14,000 per year. Tucked away on the quieter end of Main Street, the Green Street Arts Center, a community meeting place and performance venue, serves as an anchor for the community’s revitalization efforts.
GSAC is a collaborative project of the University, Middletown and The North End Action Team (NEAT).
Formed in 1997 as a response to the fatal shooting of a teenage boy, NEAT strives to enrich the neighborhood and maintain its welfare.
“Folks got together and said, ’We’ve got to do something to reclaim our community and keep our neighborhood safe for our children,’” said GSAC Director Janis Astor del Valle.
NEAT approached the city, then the University, trying to formulate a plan to help empower the North End community. Thanks to alumni donations, the University funded a feasibility study in which they identified the property at 51 Green Street as an ideal place for an arts center.
“An arts center is actually what folks in the community [felt] could really serve as an anchor for the city’s revitalization effort,” del Valle said. “They thought an arts center would be a great way to keep kids safe and engaged in productive, creative activity.”
After opening its doors in January 2005, GSAC began offering art classes for children, adults and families, including a successful after-school program where neighborhood schoolchildren can get at least one hour of homework help and one hour of arts education in a variety of disciplines.
“Green Street has a lot of good classes and good things to do,” said Deonte Parker, age 9, a GSAC student.
The kids even have freedom in their choice of after school activities.
“You can choose classes,” said Alexis Deynes, age 7. “I have hip hop.”
Green Street also offers classes in sound recording, videography, dance and a range of visual arts. Kids can learn violin or drums, they can learn tap dancing or breakdancing. The teaching artists come mostly from the Middletown community.
GSAC, which has undergone $1.6 million in renovations, is now loaded with learning resources, including a state of the art recording studio. Despite the expenses of the center, most of the children in the after school program receive financial aid.
“We subsidize nearly all the children in our after school program,” del Valle wrote in an e-mail to The Argus. “Of the 63 children in our program, 62 receive financial aid; the majority receive 90 percent aid; some receive the full 100 percent.”
The University contributes just under half of Green Street’s overall budget. The rest of the funds are raised through foundations, corporations, individual donors including some Wesleyan alumni, and earned income from tuition-based programming.
Currently, about 25 University students work at Green Street. While most are volunteers, some are work-study students. They are not limited to tutoring children after school; some students work as teaching assistants and some work in the center’s administration.
In addition to volunteering for the after school program, University students have performed in public performances including the “In the Limelight” series, which takes place every third Friday of the month.
“We love to have Wesleyan students participate in that,” del Valle said.
Green Street also hosts an open mic event on the first Fridays of the month, where University students are welcome to perform music and poetry.
“We’re also open to ideas, the great thing is we’re always evolving,” del Valle said. “So if a Wesleyan students has an idea for a project or an event they’d like to host or just see happen we’re more than willing to talk and try to develop it.”
However University involvement does not end with students—faculty are also involved at Green Street. Shawn Hill, who works with Information Technology Services (ITS), teaches web design, digital animation and other computer classes. Professor of Chemistry David Beveridge curates and runs the Sunday Salon series, which brings in Wesleyan professors once a month to share their art or expertise with the larger community.
Wesleyan students needn’t be performers or volunteers to take advantage of Green Street’s offerings.
“We have a huge Wesleyan involvement in the after school program,” said After School Counselor, Nat Holmes. “We’d love to have more Wesleyan students to come down and take classes, too.”
Despite wide-ranging University involvement at Green Street, however, the arts center and its programs remain relatively obscure on campus.
“That makes me very distressed,” Troll said. “I think it could be a really excellent place for connecting with Middletown community.”
“They have a lot of events going on there and I feel like at Wesleyan, it’s not on our radar,” she added.
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