During my whole teaching career, the majority including Union work, I found whenever there needed to be budget cuts, the “manly things” were left alone. A school without sports teams and inclusion in expensive leagues whether municipal or state with the expense of insurance, venue upkeep, large staffs, and the bills for officials at the games was unimaginable, but the “less manly” pursuits, such as the arts in any form, went right to the chopping block. Statistics show that more students who had to struggle to get an arts education entered some profession that utilized what they learned in numbers far exceeding all those student athletes with dreams of a million dollar professional sports contract, who could not transfer such skills as that of the field goal kicker to a job not involving kicking things.
In every small town, small city, large city, those too big to be realistic single cities, School board members in the majority had two things in common, the relationship to a jock and no appreciation for the arts.
They were once high school jocks, had kids who were, were married to one, jock not kid, and saw the value in the theory of what sports are rumored to teach, sportsmanship, unit cohesion, teamwork, which they actually do not unless your assessment comes from a jock and not the general school community, but have nothing but a rudimentary concept of actual education and, so, cut programs according to what would have been, had it existed in my time, a social media understanding of education.
More or less as the experts who are not in the classroom ignore those who are, teachers, still do today.
They see sports promoted on TV for a few hours each week on specific days and yell and scream a lot. But then it is over and they celebrate like they get to share in the athletes’ salaries and championship bonuses and say “we” a lot when it comes to scoring, until the next season while they spend the sports hiatus watching cable show after cable show, movie after movie, music video after music video, without it ever occurring to them that they are seeing the work of more people repeatedly who took their art and made it a career than the number of students that went through schools as athletes.
Like most big cities, Boston had Filene’s and Jordan Marsh, New York had Macy’s and Gimble’s, New Bedford, Massachusetts, had The Star Store, one of those multi-story, ornately appointed, sandstone buildings that gave late 19th and early 20th Century stores their impressive look of strength and durability with one of the first escalators in the state because the building had grown so tall.
Like most big downtown department stores, with the flight of shoppers to malls, it closed as a store when most of downtown died.
The city has a vibrant arts community in all genres and media. There are multiple art galleries. Melville’s sister’s house became an art school and is now a bed and breakfast, if I have my story straight, and many fine local artists began there and like the ships in the city’s whaling days some went off to foreign climes, and not just in recent times. There are schools of art throughout the country based on artists from New Bedford.
It made sense, therefore, when the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth needed space for an improved arts program some 20 or so years ago, a huge empty building in a downtown area that supported the arts and had places for students to eat, study, and hang out, along with being an accessible gallery for special showings, the Star Store became the College of Visual and Performing Arts at UMass Dartmouth.
When downtown was on life support this became one of the biggest factors in the revitalization of it.
According to the then head of the Chamber of Commerce, there were many benefits.
“One is it really amped up the amount of higher education that became available to New Bedford residents in our community and specifically in downtown… And so you began to see those students from all around the area, Greater New Bedford, coming into downtown to take those classes. You began to see those who worked at UMass Dartmouth come in. And then, right around the same time, maybe a year or so later, Bristol Community College came into the building as well. … Then I would say probably the most significant and most lasting impact it’s had is this emergence of the arts and culture industry in the city of New Bedford.”
Little businesses and night spots popped up. Coffee houses, non-chain eateries, places for a good bowl of soup at a reasonable price that you would never forget.
While not the commercial hay days of the past, the new businesses, while serving a need, also kept the city from becoming totally dead.
It was the arts and all those who benefited from learning about it, producing it, and experiencing it that resuscitated the city and brought it out of its coma.
Yes, there’s a “HOWEVER”.
The lease between the state and the owners of the building ran out as did the extension, and, although there had been a clause in the original agreement that the university could purchase the building after the lease for maybe a dollar but would then have to assume the expense of running such a building as the landlord had done, that did not happen so UMass Dartmouth will transfer its College of Visual and Performing Arts back to the main Dartmouth campus this fall semester.
Surprise students!
Surprise Downtown businesses who will lose customers.
Surprise New Bedford! What kept your downtown going is about to leave.
Before the train starts up, DATTCO cut service to Boston so, instead of going from reliance on a couple of buses per day until the train started and DATTCO could ease out with the switch, there was a total cut off so there would be months where getting to Boston would be tough.
Now another bridge to prosperity over the ravine of failure is being removed from the city as, before all the gentrification, revitalization, wind farm trickle down, State pier renovation, Route 18 Boulevardizing, and other city leaders dreams and schemes can take root, the state up and rips the College of Visual and Performing Arts out of the heart of the city just as the Zeiterion Theater on the next block on the same street closes as a caterpillar to reopen as a state of the art performance center in 18 months.
Does no one see this?
What is their problem with New Bedford that DATTCO and the state would do us like that?
The official reason proffered is the state’s decision not to fund the New Bedford campus in its Fiscal Year 2024 budget. There are more important things.
Classes will be moved to the home Campus in Dartmouth, way out in the middle of nowhere, but anyone who has been inside knows this present building is perfect for its purpose, and anyone just walking by and seeing what is on display or what can be seen in the old store windows, at times students working on projects, can see the value of the present location.
I bet if some sports team needed something, a new stadium, the money that could be used on the down town New Bedford Star Store campus could be found.
I spent 38 years as a teacher. I know how the game is played. No books but look at the new stadium.
A part of me is thinking that in order to keep the campus in its present location, doing for the city what it has been doing until such time as the other dreams kick in and can take its place after a successful job, to do so might mean using some of those funds we get from the state to spruce things up so things look good from the train in order to bolster what the state might be able to spare after a second thought.
It can eventually become luxury apartments and condos once we are sure the other dreams and schemes pay off, and perhaps a way will be found to keep it here as part of the city’s future regardless of any overt and covert modernization plans. Universities downtown add to the area.
Once again, the arts lose out. Not sure to what this time, but it won’t be to something that helps as many people as art education does for those who produce and those who enjoy.
When I move somewhere I usually end up falling in love with the place because, after all, something drew me to it in the first place, and when I learn about the things that give a place its character, I resent attacks on them.
As I stated earlier, there is a vibrant arts community here. Students at the College of Visual and Performing Arts are a part of that. I live downtown and see the difference when school is out, or at a minimum. and when the academic year is in full swing. Going to a local coffee shop, bistro, the soup place I mentioned, or just walking from my place to the Whaling Museum for some transcribing, I see familiar faces and those that grow familiar as the semesters go on. The head nod and mumbled “s’up?” takes on familiarity over time.
The school teacher in me, though, sees some dark humor. I support the governor on many levels and admire her for what she has been able to accomplish on those levels. That is why I find it ironic that, in simply doing her job and making sure priorities are addressed, signs the state budget as presented by the legislature, and as a known athlete cuts the arts program.
I certainly hope the downtown campus can be saved.
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