FORT SMITH -- The Community School of the Arts has met half of its $15 million goal to build a facility along the Arkansas River, with construction ready to start any day now.
The 40,000-square-foot facility will be north of the U.S. Marshals Museum and offer after-school and weekend arts programming for students from age 3 into adulthood. It will feature classrooms, teaching studios, art galleries, a recording studio, film and digital animation labs, dance studios, culinary labs, black-box theater and a 350-seat theater with a performance hall.
Rosilee Russell, founder and executive director, said she started a similar program at Westark Community College in 2006. She said the Community School was created a decade later at the St. Boniface Catholic Church while she developed a program to provide students high school credit for the classes they were taking.
"So through this program, once we get the facility built we can bus high school kids for part of their day," Russell said. "They audition to get into the program of their choice, and for three hours or more of their day they participate in courses that will provide them with high school credits at their high school. And in order to offer those programs, we had to have a facility."
Russell emphasized the school's programs are meant to complement arts programs provided by area high schools, and help students prepare for college and a career in the arts. She said the facility will be able to provide specialized, state-of-the-art programming for students in a 60-mile radius across 40 districts in Arkansas and Oklahoma.
"We're actually enhancing and providing an alternative to what's at the high school, or providing opportunities for these kids that they would not otherwise have," she said. "It does not cost the students. It's part of the state funding in order for these kids to come. It just feeds into the fact that any student can come to the program, so that's a good thing."
The Institute for the Creative Arts programming will include the School of Cinematic Arts, School of Culinary Arts, School of Music, School of Dance, School of Dramatic Arts and School of Art and Design.
Melissa Udouj said her son, Joseph Udouj, 17, has been taking drum lessons through the school since he was in fifth grade, and it's been awesome to see him grow and learn. She said he's a member of the school's ambassador jazz band, and will be performing at different venues across the community to help raise awareness for the new facility.
"Joseph has some special needs, so we weren't really sure how much he was going to be able to do, and he had phenomenal instructors that just opened up a whole new world to him," Udouj said. "He has become quite the percussionist now. A lot of things in life are hard for him, and this area has just opened up a place where he is eager to learn and want to get better. So it's been an incredible experience."
Russell said the facility is being built completely through private donors and foundations. She said with the recent $750,000 grant from the Mabee Foundation, the school has raised roughly $7.5 million so far.
"We have a group of people in this community who absolutely love what we're doing, they support what we're doing, they see the value of this not just to Fort Smith, but to the region," Russell said.
Brandon Chase Goldsmith, president of the River Valley Film Society and executive director of the Fort Smith International Film Festival, said he thinks its important to have opportunities such the Community School because it gets people involved in the arts at a young age.
"What film does is it encompasses all forms of art, from painting to actors to set builders, every single aspect of art is involved in film, so to have a center like this that is training students in that," he said. "What that's going to do is it's going to help grow our creative economy all across the River Valley."
"What excites me is I never got to do anything like that when I was a kid. I should've been an artist and I'm not, but it's because I didn't have the foundation needed to do that," said Rick Foti, board chairman.
Russell said the facility could be ready for touring as soon as May, and will be finished by late summer 2023.
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More information about the school’s programming and ways to donate can be found at its website, csafortsmith.org.