Full steam ahead for performance centre
MULGRAVE - A long-awaited fine arts centre for Chedabucto Place has cleared two major hurdles.
With provincial Education Minister Jamie Muir endorsing the project in a mid-February letter to the Strait Regional School Board, the board's elected members voted unanimously in favour of the Chedabucto Place Association Theatre Use Agreement at their latest regular monthly meeting.
"This will be an absolutely wonderful addition for the school, and - I believe - a wonderful addition for the community as well," board superintendent Phonse Gillis declared, shortly after the end of Wednesday's board meeting at the Mulgrave Professional Development Centre.
While he was pleased to see the board and the province come together to support the project, Gillis saved the bulk of his praise for the Chedabucto Place Association, which has already raised over $1 million in support of the initiative.
"The real leadership here has come not from the board itself - although we like to take the credit for it," the superintendent smiled.
"The leadership has really come from the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, and I have to give full credit to the people living in Guysborough for taking the initiative at that particular school. We're beginning a journey - we're just starting it, and there will be much more information to come."
Guysborough warden Lloyd Hines says council and the local fundraising committee are very pleased that the school board and the Minister of Education have approved the joint-use agreement, something he says was the "main hurdle" to making the performance centre a reality.
"Funding from the various levels of government was dependent on that," Hines told The Journal Tuesday. The Atlantic Canada Opportunties Agency (ACOA) has committed $700,000 to the project, while the province and the municipality have each committed $100,000. Another $100,000 has been pledged from anonymous private donors.
The remaining $100,000 needed for the project is the target of a community-wide campaign, set to begin now that the joint-use agreement is in place. Hines, who is chairing the fundraising campaign, said he is "very optimistic" that target can be achieved.
"This centre is a wonderful, wonderful gift for the community. It'll be terrific for our budding musicians, students at school and Mulgrave Road Theatre. And as an economic driver, it will boost tourism." Hines says Guysborough can now be part of a circuit for performances coming to the DeCoste Centre in Pictou and venues in Port Hawkesbury and Mabou. "We see it as a huge benefit for community."
The Chedabucto Place fine arts centre will closely resemble Strathspey Place, the 500-seat concert hall that has served as a hallmark of another school in the Strait region - Mabou's Dalbrae Academy - for the past six years. The progress towards the arrival of such a facility in Guysborough County has the area's two elected school board members beaming with pride.
"I think that in order to be a well-rounded student, you have to have some fine arts training, and I think we're lacking that in the rural areas," said East Guysborough representative Rosalee Parker.
"So I'm very pleased with this agreement and I'm really looking forward to having this space for the children. That's what I find really exciting about this - we're going to have such a beautiful program space for the students."
Parker noted that the Strathspey Place model is "unlike anything we have here in Guysborough County," and the veteran school board member is already enthusiastic about the opportunities the Chedabucto Place project will bring to students and teachers throughout the county.
"Not only will this help the students in Guysborough, but the other schools in Sherbrooke, Canso and Mulgrave will also have the opportunity of using it as well, instead of having to go to Strathspey Place," she pointed out. Parker's colleague in West Guysborough, Kim Horton, suggested that the fine arts centre was "a long time coming" and complimented all the stakeholders in the venture.
"This type of undertaking normally wouldn't be available to a school in a community this size," Horton noted. "I think it's a wonderful agreement."
