Children and adults who reside in and around Queen Village will soon have a new spot to let their creative juices flow. The Queen Village Art Center, an extension of Fairmount Art Center is slated to open this fall at Fifth and Bainbridge Streets.
The new center will be housed in a renovated 3,000-square-foot building, offering plenty of space for art and music classes, workshops, and camps. The artistic incubator will offer a relaxed spot for students to visit on days off from school, and throughout the summer – allowing kids of many ages to flex their artistic muscles and give mediums including painting, drawing, mixed media, and photography a try.
The center will also be a haven for adults, whether experienced in the arts or not. Courses in printmaking, sculpture, sewing, ceramics, decorative arts, and more are taught by professional teaching artists eager to offer guidance. Plus, most courses include the necessary materials, meaning all you have to do is show up ready to learn and experiment.
The opening of the spot is not only exciting because it is a new place for more Philadelphians to unveil their hidden artistic skills, it’s also important for the education of the city’s children. With budget cuts ravaging the Philadelphia School District, many school are losing or have lost much of their creative arts programming.
Hopefully this is one of many Fairmount Art Center spin-offs that pop up in neighborhoods throughout the city. After all, the Center itself began in 2004 as a humble studio perched atop a Fairmount coffee shop, and has grown to a trusted member of the city’s creative learning community. Let the paint splattering begin.
