creative capital springfrield

Projects

The Plotkin Residential Arts Center

The Plotkin Residential Arts Center is envisioned as a mixed-use facility for artists. With more than 30,000 square feet on three floors, the building offers the capacity for artists studios, living spaces and office space for arts-related businesses and non-profits. Our goal is to establish a music center, a performing arts venue and a gallery to present the work of visual artists.

Music Center

The Music Center is imagined as a hub of activity and resources for regional musicians. We envision the PRAC as the premier resource for regional musicians for recording, rehearsal, CD release parties, concerts and an annual music festival.

The Hippodrome is an excellent venue for CD release parties. Practice studios will be available to lease by the hour; long-term leases will also be available. We will recruit a local recording studio to occupy space and offer commercial services to musicians. We will recruit a retail operation that sells musical instruments and specialty technology for musicians. Other commercial support services might include office space for managers and agents and videography facilities.

Our marketing plan will include community outreach activities. For instance, we will sponsor a competition among high schools throughout the region based on the American Idol model. Competitions will be held within individual high schools; winners will then compete and perform at the Hippodrome.

We will approach Danny Kane, a well-regarded entertainer, with an offer to establish a permanent rehearsal and performance space in our facility. We envision that eventually, the PRAC will function as a central facility and act in partnership with other non-profit groups engaged in promoting the performance and appreciation of music. We plan on building and nurturing relationships with groups such as the Community Music School, The Majestic Theater, the Mass Mutual Performing Arts Center and the Springfield Symphony.

Our aim is to strengthen the role of music in the creative life of the region and to establish Springfield as a premier destination in New England for music lovers and performers. In support of that goal, we propose to organize and host an annual music festival, based on hugely successful models in Europe, that will showcase performers working in every musical genre, from jazz to hip-hop to classical music. Performances will be held in the streets, in the theaters, in the Symphony Hall, in The Hippodrome. Again, one of the goals is to encourage movement, on foot, from one neighborhood to another in the Walkable City.

Theater Arts

The old Paramount Theater, currently named the Hippodrome, was built in the late 1920’s at a staggering cost of $1 million. It was the premier venue for cinema and ater theatrical arts in western Massachusetts. It is so intact that many of the walls wear their original paint. The elegant art deco chandeliers have been hanging from the ceilings for almost 100 years. It is a theater of historical significance, both for its architectural beauty and as a reflection of the days when the city was a thriving metropolitan hub in western New England. It is a structure that would cost many millions of dollars to build today – and our current interest in technology, cost-efficiency and functionality is incompatible with an earlier appreciation for the decorative as an end in itself. But we must preserve the historical aesthetic – it is something to cherish, to remember and to inform the future. It reminds us that beauty has a right to exist for its own sake.

However, historical preservation can be functional. And it our aim to act as stewards to the memory held within the walls of the Paramount Theater while also offering it as a venue for contemporary performing arts. In recognition of the existing theater venues in Springfield and throughout the Pioneer Valley, we are developing a somewhat different model for the use of the Paramount as a theater. Because of the availability of livable space in the upper floors of the Paramount building, we are exploring the possibility of offering both the theater and living space to attract small theater groups from places such as New York and Boston who would be interested in occupying a residential theater complex as they prepare shows for debuts in large metropolitan areas.

Most small theater companies employ young actors who are deeply committed to an art form that offers little in the way of financial support. These young artists work in restaurants and nightclubs by night – to support the cost of life in a very expensive city — and rehearse for theatre performances by day. We are imagining that the theater directors, producers and actors would be attracted to a venue that provided affordable, dormitory-style living and access to a professional stage and a beautiful house. We imagine that in exchange for an ideal working and living situation, that the actors and their associates would hold workshops and seminars for aspiring young actors throughout the city. The theater companies would also stage initial productions of their pays for local residents at reduced prices. Think of our program as an early stage Tanglewood-in-the-city-for-theater.

The theater groups would be charged a nominal amount to cover the costs of renting our space. We are also panning on approaching specific foundations and individual donors who might be interested in endowing the kind of program we are describing to help offset the expense of the program. The Springfield Paramount Theater Arts Program would be unique within the US and our marketing activity would exploit the model as innovative and replicable.