For creative artists in Hattiesburg, new opportunities are available. New upgrades at the Rebekah Stark Johnson Community Arts Center are now complete thanks to a $300 thousand grant from the Mississippi Arts Commissions Building Fund for the Arts Program.
“That allows us to create more works, offer more workshops and with our ADA access entry, we can now bring in programs here for special needs populations, which is a big deal to our department,” said Besty Mercier, the Director of Parks recreation.
The new upgrades include a new clay studio for pottery and hand building, a new kiln and storage room, an ADA-accessible ramp, new HVAC for the black box theatre and renovations of the center’s restroom facilities. These upgrades will allow artists to comfortably work in their rented tenant spaces and provide more classes for children or adults along with performance classes for teenagers.
The center received the grant a year and a half ago and is now in the final stages of having closing documents approved.
The Rebekah Stark Johnson Community Arts Center currently hosts after school classes for children and quarterly art markets for artists and vendors to sell. The building contains a theatre space for performances and routine classes that rent areas for scheduled meetings.
Johnson says previously, the center’s pottery and studio works were held in the Ben McNair center but with this grant, the center can provide all art mediums under one space for a variety of people.
Before becoming the Rebekah Stark Johnson Community Arts Center, the building was the Hattiesburg American Newspaper Building.
Johnson says more upgrades will continue in the future and is now possible after the new HVAC system due to the grant.
“With an aging building, those investments are really large so were really looking foward to making use of those spaces that previously didn’t have working HVAC and getting residents and tenants into those spaces.”
The arts center hasn’t held specific pottery classes for young adults or youth, but the classroom space can allow more residents and space. This February the center is working to have handwheels in the new clay studio and more than one kiln and utilize another space for peices to dry.
“These improvements allow us to do more and serve more people,” said Katie Ginn, manager of the Community Arts Center. “We can now offer additional classes to better accommodate our guest.”
With the completion of this project, the City of Hattiesburg invested more than $800,000 into the Community Arts Center through a combination of state grant funding and local matching dollars. That total includes this grant and a previous Mississippi Arts Commission Building Fund for the Arts award. The previous grant helped fund the creation of the center’s black box theatre and performance space.
Currently the Arts Center has performing art spaces, a dance studio, classrooms and several collaborative and private studios. Operated by the City of Hattiesburg’s Parks and Recreation Department, the Center offers an array of activities and opportunities, many that are free and open to the public. New art classes are scheduled to begin in March, and new spaces will be utilized.
