UPDATE ON OUR PLAN FOR AN EDUCATIONAL ARTS CENTER
Residents of the Monadnock Region are facing an unprecedented opportunity to foster the growth of our area arts, one that calls for careful direction, widespread collaboration and generous public support.
At this point in time MoCo Arts is at a 16-year crossroads that has required our Board and Staff to plan significant steps to expand our own capacity in response to community-driven demand for our programming. However, as the area’s leader in multi-arts education, we wish not simply to be the stewards of our own growth...but the catalyst for growth of all arts resources throughout our wonderful community.
To fully grasp the opportunity before us...to understand where we are coming from and where we want to go...we ask you to read OUR STORY...
LET’S START WITH WHO WE ARE
MoCo Arts is a non profit, community-based, family-centered organization offering a unique combination of arts and fitness experiences for all, ages 18 months to 100. We are a teaching organization offering instruction in dance, theatre, wellness and the visual arts through year-round classes and via multi-arts summer camps for students 4-18. We offer an inclusive and supportive environment in which all are welcomed regardless of age, social standing or where they are in their movement and creative arts journeys.
Our Mission
Transforming lives through movement and creative expression
Our Vision
To be the recognized leader in community-based arts and fitness programming, igniting a passion for life through movement and creative expression
During the past year we taught over 2000 students of all ages and abilities, logging over 50,000 hours of student instruction time. Our students performed before 10,000 audience members who were witnesses to our mission, that being the transformation that takes place when our students so beautifully give back to us what we have been able to impart to them.
Importantly, we are a very well-staffed and well-managed organization. Gross revenues are now approaching $1 million annually. Although the arts have traditionally been a challenging arena for operational stability and sound fiscal management, we have an enviable record of stewardship. As a non-profit organization we have been able to meet 2/3rds of our costs via tuition and admissions, donations and grants providing the remainder. We fulfill our commitment to keep the arts accessible by providing our students scholarship and tuition discount assistance, over $50,000 during the past year alone.
Our professional and accomplished artist/educators and certified wellness and fitness teachers have years of teaching and artistic credits behind them. Today they number over 50 people, 26 year round and 25 who teach seasonally. They are passionate about what they do. Unquestionably, they are our most treasured asset.
A LITTLE OF OUR HISTORY
MoCo Arts began in November 1991 as The Moving Company Dance Center, the creation of our founder, Catherine Skove, who wished to bring new opportunities for movement arts to the Monadnock Region.
We started in an abandoned machine shop at #76 Railroad Street facing vacant land which had once been home to the Cheshire Railroad when the area east of Main Street was a manufacturing and shipping hub more than 100 years ago. Through Catherine’s generosity this tired old building was transformed into a Black Box theatre and studio space for teaching dance and wellness. We were situated in what was a relatively remote spot at the time, looking across Railroad Street at a silent wasteland. And then the beat began. Through the 90’s enrollment at The Moving Company grew steadily, fueled by imaginative programming taught by an ever-expanding faculty of artist-educators. Our lobby and parking areas filled to overflowing during our “rush hours.” A community venture at the outset, we changed our structure to that of a non-profit organization in the year 2000, setting our course for the future.
Throughout the early years of this decade, The Moving Company evolved into a truly multi-arts organization. We added many new programs to enrich our dance, music and theatre curriculum. Wellness and fitness instruction saw parallel gains. Then in January of 2006 we opened Artworks under the direction of Craig Stockwell, noted artist and Keene State faculty member. This was our first venture into the visual arts.
Our expansion was carefully planned with an eye to community need and demand. As we recognized when we updated our strategic plan in 2005, growth would challenge us and inevitably come at a price. Community demand was testing the limits of what The Moving Company—as it was originally known and configured—could supply. We knew that change was needed...to our structure, our facilities and our resources...unless we were willing to cap our programming and our enrollment. That choice was unacceptable to both our staff and our Board.
TRANSITION
During 2005, we began planning our transition, starting with a restructuring of our organization itself. The old business model was outdated, as was our original name, “The Moving Company.” Neither represented what the organization had now become. We became MoCo Arts, a name that reflects both who we are and what we do as partners in a Community Vision for the Arts:
Mo—stands for Monadnock...the entire community we serve
Co—denotes together, in conjunction with, jointly. As in…
Collaboration—interacting with area arts partners
Cooperation—recognizing countless parents and supporters who have built sets, sewed costumes, monitored kids, shared hugs and tears and supported us financially since we started, and...
Community—the keystone of our foundation. We offer opportunities to all who come through our doors...and we continue to work tirelessly to remain located in the heart of downtown Keene as a major cultural and economic asset as we plan our future.
At the same time we strengthened and expanded our Board to support our Executive Director, Carol Batchelder and realigned our teaching staff, assigning responsibility for our major program groups to key faculty members:
Dance Artistic Director, Reagan Messer
Theatre Artistic Director, Marty Hennum
Wellness Director, Pam Clough
Visual Arts — Artistic Director, Craig Stockwell
— Program Director, Peter Granucci
Multi-arts Summer Camps — CAKE Director, Marty Hennum
— CupCAKE Director, Danielle Fitzpatrick
Put it all together and, today, we are…
a newly redesigned organization with an even stronger focus on artistic & program quality.
Our new design enables us to
• stay focused on our mission of transforming lives through movement and creative
expression
• continue to be responsive and innovative in the programming we offer to you, for that
has been the cornerstone of our success.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
As our programming grew, so did our need for space: to teach, rehearse, stage and exhibit. We are straining the capacity not just of our facilities...but area facilities...as well. Sheer availability is now presenting logistical nightmares, challenging our resourcefulness and testing the patience of our students and parents (not to mention our faculty and staff). We are approaching saturation.
Consider this: while we continued to expand our multi-arts and fitness programming with new and exciting course offerings in 2007… we also staged the following outstanding student productions:
How did we accomplish all of this? By operating out of 11 different locations!!!
While we were extremely fortunate that we were able to beg, barter and lease offsite facilities, ask yourself (as we ask ourselves), is this the most effective and efficient way for us to manage our business?
 Bursting at the seams, we recently decided to transition all of our adult programming into new quarters and secured 4700 square feet of rental space on Elm Street (easily accessible behind Artworks). We are refitting its interior and plan to move our wellness and adult dance programs into it by June, 2008. MoCo Arts is extremely grateful to Bill Walker and the MacMillin Company for making this move possible.
EDUCATIONAL ARTS CENTER
But the most exciting plans for transition are still to come. Several years ago we began our search for a suitable downtown location where most or all of our programming might be consolidated into one building with adequate space and updated technology for the teaching, performance and exhibition of our multi-arts agenda...space we clearly needed and the students and community we serve deserved.
Almost a dozen buildings and sites were closely scrutinized. In late 2006, a site in the Railroad Land Development project (managed by the Monadnock Economic Development Corporation) became available. This exciting opportunity was time-sensitive, requiring MoCo Arts to execute a Purchase and Sales agreement within a set period of time.
During the next 12 months we completed an assessment of our program space needs and hired LaVallee/Brensinger Architects to conduct predesign work. Our new building would be sited and designed as an interdisciplinary arts center compatible with Keene’s downtown area, reflecting the history and heritage of the former railroad land. It would be located in an inviting pedestrian walkway/greenway adjacent to Keene’s Main Street and bike path, within walking distance of five downtown schools, the Colonial Theatre, Keene State College and the Historical Society of Cheshire County. Not only will it attract shoppers and strollers to the downtown area, it will enhance the quality of life that makes the Monadnock Region and Keene such a wonderful place to live.
The new Center (see preliminary drawing opposite) will accommodate MoCo Arts’ needs currently and for the next 10 years and will consist of:
• A 44,000 square foot multi-arts education center with adequate space for teaching,
rehearsals and exhibition.
• A 350-seat teaching theatre for productions to showcase student achievements
(performance being a key component of our mission).
Importantly, this facility could also be used by other arts organizations.
The Railroad Redevelopment Project will also feature a new hotel, a mixed-use five story building, a senior housing complex and offices for Southwestern Community Services. Our MoCo Community Multi-arts Educational Facility, with its adjacent attractively landscaped “green space,” will center this project, transforming what has been abandoned and vacant property for the past 20 years into a vital and historic section of downtown.
Next we hired a private consultant to conduct a feasibility study to measure community support. Results of that study, completed in the summer of 2007, were most encouraging. They provided a clear endorsement of our project...which came with two caveats:
First—nail down the site in the Railroad Development Project. - It’s a great location!
Second— then take a break. The YMCA Capital Campaign must go first!
We enthusiastically agreed. Firmly supporting community initiatives, we have postponed our Capital Campaign for two years to allow the YMCA to conduct its own. We are using the time for further study of the scope of our building plans and opportunities for additional community collaboration.
We are pleased to announce that our work on the near term Feasibility Study mandate has produced positive results. We have already signed a Purchase and Sales Agreement with MEDC on 2/3rds of our Railroad land building site and hope to acquire the remaining space shortly.
Finally, we are thrilled to announce that we are now the proud owners of our original building and land at 76 Railroad Street. This ownership provides us with additional leverage for financing our considerable transition costs.
To our MoCo Arts Supporters:
We know we have accomplished a great deal as we plan for our future...just as we know that we have miles to go before we sleep.
All of us at MoCo Arts sense a new and heightened interest in furthering the growth of the arts in the Monadnock Region. We’ve been gratified that our plan to build an Educational Arts Center in downtown Keene has been one of the sparks that has ignited this flame. It tells us that we are doing our job well.
 We are ever grateful for the enormous support we continue to receive from our community.
Together...we can make this happen!
The Board and Staff
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