Youngstown Cultural Arts Center
03/02/2006
A community once known for its brothels and taverns now houses one of Seattle's most innovative centers for arts, creativity and community building. The Youngstown School in Southwest Seattle was built in 1917 to educate the mostly immigrant children of mill workers at the Seattle Steel Company. The old school building which sat boarded up and vacant for 16 years has undergone a radical transformation. Newly opened last week as the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, the handsome brick building listed on the National Register of Historic Places is now a place where 36 artists from all disciplines live and work. Dave Beck talks to Randy Engstrom, Founding Director of the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. Also on today's show, music from the band Calexico, Novelist Jay McInerney's new book The Good Life, and Alice Kaderlan.Today's Featured Music Selection: Calexico
The forthcoming CD Garden Ruin is where Calexico fill the dusty, empty landscapes they've long documented with a big, big sound. Taking full advantage of the rockin' Calexico live band, the record distils its multicultural roots, the input of a producer, new domestic arrangements, international affairs, broadening horizons, developing ambitions and changing scenery. It's not your average Calexico album, but then again, it never is with this band. We'll preview tracks from Garden Ruin throughout the hour.
Related Links:
At 2:05pm - Youngstown Cultural Arts Center
A community once known for its brothels and taverns now houses one of Seattle's most innovative centers for arts, creativity and community building. The Youngstown School in Southwest Seattle was built in 1917 to educate the mostly immigrant children of mill workers at the Seattle Steel Company. The old school building which sat boarded up and vacant for 16 years has undergone a radical transformation. Newly opened last week as the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, the handsome brick building listed on the National Register of Historic Places is now a place where 36 artists from all disciplines live and work. Youngstown tenants also include youth, family service and environmental organizations, a Cambodian Cultural Center, and newly designed media, dance, theatre and audio production facilities. Dave Beck talks to Randy Engstrom, Founding Director of the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center. Randy tells the story of how artists, architects, neighborhood activists and community visionaries have put a new face on a once rough and tumble neigborhood.
Related Links:
At 2:33pm - Jay McInerney
The attacks of September 11, 2001 jolted New Yorkers out of the world they had been living in and into a world that had been re-defined by airplanes hitting those towers. Novelist Jay McInerney's new book The Good Life begins on September 10th, detailing the schedules, lives, and relationships of two wealthy and well-connected Manhattan couples. The events of the next day reshape their worlds just as dramatically as it did the public consciousness. McInerney first burst on to the literary scene with 1984's Bright Lights, Big City. The protagonist of that book was a fact checker for a magazine, a profession the author had previously held. He has said that the characters in The Good Life are his friends and neighbors and part of the world he lives in, a world very much removed from the Pacific Northwest. We learn about that world and what 9/11 did to it.
Related Links:
Alice Kaderlan
Our monthly visit from Alice Kaderlan for reviews and previews of events in Pacific Northwest dance.
