MEMPHIS, TN - Memphis just received a $100,000 grant for the arts. Mayor A C Wharton's office says the new grant is a significant step toward revitalizing the city's arts district.
The Memphis College of Art Studio work shop in the heart of Memphis' South Main arts district gives students a place to make art without an expensive studio rental.
MCA's president, Ron Jones, says a space for artists can help turn around a city.
"Artists respond to a community and need the community to help them," Jones tells abc24.com, "and the community needs the arts as a way of stimulating and creating excitement. Think about what Memphis would be without music."
The National Endowment for Arts is giving the city of Memphis a $100,000 grant to help support the growth of the arts locally. The city's putting that money toward its' project with Artspace, a non-profit developer of affordable living and working space for artists.
"In South Main," says mayoral assistant Kerry Hayes, "we want to create a denser concentration of artists to make the area more interesting and vibrant."
"The idea of making space available," says Jones, "where artists can live and work, makes other people come in, including entrepreneurs and restaurants. It revitalizes a community, turns it around and makes it forever a much better and more productive part of Memphis."
The Artspace will house 50 to 70 living units and will provide large community spaces for all forms of art.
Hayes says in a time when cities are competing to keep young talent, the grant for future development will help push Memphis above the rest.
"We expect it to draw people," he tells abc24.com, "and we expect it to keep people. We want to reverse the number of young creative people who are leaving the city."
The Artspace project is scheduled to open in 2014. It will be the first of its' kind in the Southeastern United States.
The project will cost about $15 million. The city plans to use grants and private fundraising to pay for it. There are about six properties in the South Main arts district the city is looking at for the space. It hopes to secure a building by September, 2011.
