Architect’s rendering of the Madison Youth Arts Center, on East Mifflin Street.
Madison-area parents who’ve enrolled their children in classes at Children’s Theater of Madison (CTM) or Madison Youth Choirs know the drill. Theater classes and rehearsals for CTM take place in more than a dozen rented spaces around the city, from abandoned offices to church basements. And singers are delivered to Madison Youth Choirs’ cramped, windowless studios at the dying Westgate mall.
By fall 2020, that will change dramatically, thanks to a strong partnership between the two nonprofits and a gift from Madison’s arts angel, Pleasant T. Rowland, who has pledged $20 million toward the building of the Madison Youth Arts Center.
The newly formed nonprofit will launch a capital campaign to raise another $10 million. “We’ve always included [Rowland] in our dreams and visions,” says Roseann Sheridan, CTM’s artistic director. “Youth is her passion, and arts are her passion. This gift will be so transformative to Madison and Dane County and beyond.”
The 65,000 square foot center is planning to break ground in April. It will be part of a mixed-use development on East Mifflin Street, across from Lapham School, and will include parking, rehearsal studios, shared work spaces, classrooms, offices and performance spaces, including a state-of-the-art 300-seat theater.
Sheridan says the facility has been a long time in the making. “Lots of people in the community have been talking about the need for space and the need for inclusive, welcoming, affordable, versatile space,” says Sheridan. “One of the things we realized we were really looking at was how important space was — to our own survival, really.”
Allen Ebert, CTM’s managing director, says CTM has been strained by operating out of so many different locations. “We would form these wait lists for some of our programs,” says Ebert. “I would have to find another landlord, another building, and we just couldn’t react fast enough. Turning youth away is sad to me.” Ebert often spent a month seeking a space large enough to rehearse A Christmas Carol, the company’s annual holiday show.
Lynn Hembel, managing director of Madison Youth Choirs, says her organization is also challenged by location. “We are on the second floor of the Westgate Mall,” says Hembel, who notes the many vacant storefronts there. The site “does not reflect at all the magic that happens inside the space,” she adds. There is no place for parents to observe rehearsals, and large choirs have to be broken into smaller groups. “Our space currently constrains our ability to add programming. To have access to space that’s specifically designed for the work that we do is just unbelievably exciting to us,” she says.
Sheridan says she first visited the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center at least a decade ago, and wants young people in Madison to have the similar opportunities. “There were kids coming in — different ethnicities, different races. One’s carrying a violin, one’s carrying some dance shoes, one’s carrying sheet music, one’s carrying a script,” says Sheridan. “It’s so exciting to see them all coming into the same physical space, going into their own practice rooms for their own particular chosen discipline, but then being curious about somebody else’s work.”
The new center will also open its doors to other organizations that need space. “It’s a rich experience to just have a great space where kids can come and do CTM or MYC, but it’s even richer and more exciting if there are sporadic users,” says Sheridan.
Sheridan emphasizes that a facility is a positive step for Madison, but won’t solve Madison’s arts disparities. “I don’t think we can sit back and say if we build it they will come,“ says Sheridan, adding that a diverse group of young people has been invited into the design process with an eye toward building inclusivity.
“I just hope that leadership at the state and city level steps up to see that arts are so vital to our economy, and especially starting with youth,” says Ebert. “We are creating the next generation of thinkers and innovators. We are in the business of helping them discover their world, and helping them discover themselves and become the best they can be.”
