East and West come together in schools

By Andrea Chevalier and Lucy Lopez
Bengal News Reporters 
           This is a tale of two high schools.
           Both work with teenage students who have similar stories, likes, dislikes and problems. What separates the two is geography and race.
           The Ferry Street Corridor Project uses art and history to help unify these high schools and the communities around them. The project is a set of after-school programs  in Lafayette High School on the West Side and the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts on the East Side that is using art to find common ground between the two communities. One program is run by Friends of the Buffalo Story, and the other by the Anne Frank Project at SUNY Buffalo State. 
           Through the project students from both schools have the opportunity to learn about the history of the city they live in while giving back to the community. 
           “They are doing art-related and theatrical-related story gathering right now,” said Cassie Lipsitz, lead art teacher at Lafayette High School. “They develop ideas and concepts for art, and they are making a logo, and they also participate in community-building theatre activities. The Anne Frank Project is working on that with them. The idea is that the students at Lafayette will work with the students from Performing Arts. There is a gap that we know exists in the City of Buffalo between the East and the West Side. Ferry Street is the corridor that would satisfy that.”
          Friends of the Buffalo Story, which is just one of the partners involved in the project, is a program that was created in order to bring the people of Buffalo closer to the roots and history of the city. Through citizen-based programing, Friends of the Buffalo Story hope to open the eyes of the people in the community to the history of Buffalo.
          “(A group of people) realized that there was a need for some group to kind of represent the heritage of Buffalo,” said Marissa Lehner, project manager of the Ferry Street Corridor Project. “Since they’ve formed themselves, they’ve been around for about a year-and-a-half, now two years, where they’ve held various types of programming.” 
          Lehner, Annette Daniels-Taylor and Barrett Gordon run one of the after-school programs, where they work to get to know the school, the students and their needs. Daniels-Taylor works on the East Side while Gordon, who also runs the WASH Project, works with the school on the West Side.      
          “These kids matter and it is really important for them to realize that,” Lehner said. “ (We hope to) teach students a different curriculum based on public art — trying to help the students understand that art can be out in the community. Dialog can be art.”
     


       In the other program, teaming up with Drew Kahn and Eve Everette of the Anne Frank Project, the Ferry Street Corridor Project has started work with both schools to focus on community building, something the Anne Frank Project is known for.
            “Buffalo is a town that has celebrated refugees and its immigrants – the Italians, the Polish, the Germans – for years,” Kahn said. “Now we’re celebrating the Bhutanese, the Congolese, the Burmese, the Iraqi; all of these great new communities and great new stories coming in that will make Buffalo’s new singular story.” 
             The support that the Ferry Street Corridor Project receives from the community and local political leaders helps it grow.  Buffalo artists are involved with helping the students create art works and Mayor Byron Brown has also shown his approval for the goals of the project’s mission. An “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts funds the project. 
           The project began on Oct. 28. For the first 15 weeks, the students will focus on gathering stories. In the spring, they will start putting public art pieces together. 
           “At this point, we definitely want to find a way to make this sustainable,” Lehner said. “Ferry Street just has so much history and relevance for Buffalo. It really can tell a very broad story but also with a lot of great details. Ferry Street was technically part of the Underground Railroad and they are a lot of great stories to be told.”

Clubhouse preps for summer construction

By Peter Murphy and Bill Schutt 
Bengal News West Reporters

The 60-year-old Butler-Mitchell Clubhouse has seen better days with outdated classrooms, no air conditioning and ceilings falling down.

The clubhouse at 370 Massachusetts Ave. will undergo a $650,000 reconstruction project. Phase one will start in July with the gymnasium and in October phase two will close the doors on the Boys and Girls Club until January 2015.

“The footprint of the building will not change,” said Tim Brennan, the chief development officer of the Boys and Girls Club. “The building will be gutted to create more space inside for our children.”

Tim Brennan, on project specifics:

          The Butler-Mitchell Clubhouse was built in the early 1950s and is the second oldest Boys and Girls Club in the area. The clubhouse needed renovations, or it was in danger of being closed, said Brennan.

The gymnasium’s paint is chipping and the ceiling is falling down. New York State determined that children under the age of 12 should not be in the gym until it was fixed, said Brennan.

In October, when phase two begins the remaining building will be gutted.
“Plumbing will be addressed first,” said Jody Briggs-Garcia the resource development coordinator of the Boys and Girls Club. “We are limited now to the number of children we can serve based on the amount of urinals and sinks we have, but after the renovation we will be able to increase our average daily attendance.”

Currently, Butler-Mitchell serves 76 children on a daily basis and 300 children a year, but after the renovation the club expects to serve 120 children a day and over 500 children a year.

The construction company to work on the renovation for the clubhouse has not been decided yet, but bidding will begin shortly, Briggs-Garcia said.

New windows and larger access will be added to the entrance

The front of the clubhouse will change during renovation. The entrance will be larger to support more children. The front window will be larger, and a security system with extra lighting will be added to the entrance to provide a safer environment for the children coming and going throughout the hours the club is open.

The Boys and Girls Club has raised $440,000 so far, $150,000 coming from a state grant, which will be used to begin renovations on the gym. Phase two of the project will begin in the fall when the club hopes to raise the remaining $210,000 Briggs-Garcia said.

During phase two, the whole club will be shut down, but the Boys and Girls Club will provide transportation for children of the Butler-Mitchell Clubhouse to some of the other clubhouses in the area.

“We would end up working with our other clubs where we could actually transport our kids that come here to another clubhouse,” Briggs-Garcia said.

There are several clubhouses in the area, the closest being the John F. Beecher Clubhouse on Tenth Street. The John F. Beecher Clubhouse is a possible relocation for the children of Butler-Mitchell, but where the children end up could vary.

“It’s going to depend on what we’re able to coordinate from this end. It’s going to depend on how many kids are registered and where their parents want to send the children. Some parents might say ‘my kid will take a break for a little while.’ For our working parents, and we have a lot of them, they might say ‘transport them somewhere else because we need a program,’” said Briggs-Garcia.

After phase two is completed the children of the clubhouse will have air conditioning for the summer months, and a new reception area when they enter the building, said Briggs-Garcia.The kitchen also will be modernized and become a learning kitchen where the meals and snacks will be served daily, and nutrition classes will be offered to the children.

Classrooms will be outfitted with new technology

The children will also have more modernized classroom facilities. The current classroom at the clubhouse is outdated and after the renovations, new computers and tablets will be added to the club.

“We want to teach the kids how to use tablets and smart boards,” Briggs-Garcia said. “We want the kids to be on the cutting edge, when it comes to going to school or getting a job.”