Benefitting Arts

Benefitting Arts – Gardner MA

The City of Gardner Massachusetts has accomplished successes in Benefitting Arts, including, but not limited to:

The City of Gardner has recognized the importance of the arts and recently has increased its support in order to create an environment wherein the arts can flourish.

In a sense, the City’s appreciation for the arts and its support dates back many decades and much is chronicled in the Gardner Museum (the one located on Pearl Street in Gardner)

Today, Gardner has various artists’ associations and various retail establishments involved in the sale of art.

The new Gardner Elementary School built in 2023 was specifically set up to more easily display art. Gardner hopes to accomplish the task of instilling the love of art from the Grade School level forward.

Gardner MA is increasingly becoming a more art-friendly community. GardnerMagazine.com spoke with Gardner Mayor Michael Nicholson and here is what he had to say:

Mayor Nicholson: The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to seeing how we’ve benefited the arts is our reinstitution of the elementary school band program, where we have over 200 students now participating in that program, to the point where we can’t have a single concert on one night, just because there’s so many students that one don’t fit on the stage, and 2, their parents don’t fit in the crowd. So that’s an excellent problem to have, the one that I wouldn’t even call a problem, that we now have students really expressing themselves on the concert stage. At the same time, utilizing things like the Williams Rockwell Foundation funding and different city funds, that we’ve been able to implement new art programs in our school directly. Either through a new art teacher at the elementary school, through new enrichment programs in our other schools, purchasing a new Kiln for the high schools ceramics classes, new drawing tables at the middle schools, new art display cases for art shows. And that’s just in our schools. Now you add that the city is working with GALA, the Gardner Area League of artists, for a potential location in Gardner, once the School Committee votes to declare some of our old school buildings as surplus, and the city takes full ownership of those from the superintendent department. The new public opportunities that we have, beginning with the mural over underneath the route to railroad bridge over behind Hanaford. That will be completed this year, with the other half being done shortly. As well as some other new murals that will be painted throughout the city as well. It’s something that we want to show people that you can be creative and you can find yourself here, no matter if its on a sports field, on a stage, behind a canvas or behind a paintbrush, or just going out in the city and finding a place that you can find yourself in. Because other people have chosen to express themselves and give those new amenities that are there. That’s the goal that we have here.