Today is the grand opening of Mitchell Street Arts on Milwaukee’s south side.
It’s an arts hub, which seeks to promote the creative abundance in the neighborhood. Mitchell Street Arts came to be after two years of preparation. The work included holding community conversations about what residents wanted from the space.
WUWM's Race & Ethnicity reporter Teran Powell visited Mitchell Street Arts at 710 W. Historic Mitchell Street as renovations were being completed.
Gordon says the arts hub will have several functions. One is to serve as a community maker space, where area residents can try out — or hone — their craft.
"Our community maker space has a wood shop, a ceramic studio, a photo dark room, a street arm room, and some other fun toys," Gordon says.
Gordon says the community will get free access to the maker space three days a week.
The arts hub also has an artist in residency program. "The artist in residence program is an iterative six-month program where we give free studio space out, along with network opportunities and a gallery show to local artists," they say.
Gordon adds that Mitchell Street Arts is also providing arts programming and arts therapy to organizations throughout the city. The groups include those that serve immigrants, refugees, and people returning to the community after being incarcerated.
And the arts hub has a stage for public programming.
Mitchell Street Arts was two years in the making. Gordon – who uses the pronoun they — wanted to start a community arts center since they were in high school. So, they put in a bid on this location, wanting to co-produce a space with the neighborhood, and things started to take shape.
It began with community conversation.
"I can’t even count how many conversations we had with about 30 chairs in a circle. Local residents, artists, civic leaders, really just figuring out, “What do you want this space to be?,” Gordon says.
Residents were asked where they saw holes in Milwaukee and the neighborhood’s quilt, where Mitchell Street Arts could fill in the gaps.
"A lot of people said that there isn’t a place to do public programming in the neighborhood and so we wanted to wrap that into it and really ask well what sort of public programming do you want to do? It was fun because it was meant to be engaging," they say.
Gordon says people also kept mentioning something that wasn't even on their radar. "A lot of people said, 'Well, there’s no good place to get coffee around here.' And so, that came up so many times that I started reaching out to local coffee shops to see if anyone would be interested in doing a partnership, and so Rise & Grind is actually going to have their first location on the South Side inside here," Gordon says.
Gordon says what was learned in these community conversations was used to build the space’s mission, vision, and values. Next came the fundraising process, and then renovations.
Now Mitchell Street Arts is a reality.
But, back to my tour of the space. On the first floor, is the aforementioned art gallery. The classroom.
"It’s kind of just a clean, flexible, multi-purpose room. Any of our community partners, which we have a pretty extensive list with — can book it out for free to do any kind of classes, lectures, workshops that they want to do," Gordon says.
Gordon says partners keep any fees they may charge for classes, and the center takes zero commission on any art sold from the gallery.
There’s also the stage for public programming.
"We do a mixture of hosting our own programming and then other organizations programming," they say. "We’re really a creative commons and so the idea is that we can also serve as a home for a lot of the houseless arts non-profits in the neighborhood."
There are also some studio spaces. A couple of restrooms. Gordon and I joked that we both love a good looking bathroom. They say, "If you're gonna to be an arts organization, you gotta have a nice bathroom."
And finally, down in the basement is the maker space, a photo dark room, the only publicly available dark room in the city as far as Gordon knows, and a street art room.
Gordon says they have many hopes for the future of Mitchell Street Arts. That includes being able to pay artists more to do programming in the space, emphasizing public art more in programming, and having a more renowned artist in residency program.
They encourage people to swing by once the center opens. And Gordon says at the grand opening, expect a party.
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