Open Arts United aims to increase access to cultural activities

Jonny Clock Works of Bee Skep Puppet Theatre entertains members of the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester in November, an event sponsored by Open Arts United. (Courtesy photo)

Members of the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester were recently treated to an early evening puppet show by Jonny Clock Works of Bee Skep Puppet Theatre. That same November week, students in the after-school program at the Granite YMCA in Londonderry practiced working with clay directed by ceramic artist Teresa Taylor of Salty Dog Pottery.

The events were presented by Open Arts United, a new nonprofit initiated by Manchester entrepreneur Howard Brodsky, CEO and co-founder of CCA Global Partners, a Manchester-based company that develops and supports cooperative businesses.

Brodsky and his board members aim to bring the arts to everyone. Open Arts United has been using crowdfunding to raise money for specific local events.

“Arts and cultural organizations in America are really for the wealthy,” Brodsky said during a recent interview with NH Business Review for the Down to Business podcast. “If you look who goes to events, whether it be local theater, music, opera, it’s the upper-middle class of our society across all of America.”

Brodsky appreciates that cultural institutions are trying to be inclusive, but he thinks not enough has been done to reach people in the lower economic environment, including refugees and other immigrants, who may have had little exposure to arts and culture in the United States.

“There is such opportunity to broaden their awareness of our life and our society and change their lives for the positive. And so Open Arts United is an initiative to really bring all kinds of parts of our society into the arts and to partner with both the art organizations and organizations serving that population base in order to do matching for that and to do it eventually in a fairly large scale,” Brodsky said. “So, it can make an enormous impact, not on a scale of 10 and 20, but hopefully on a scale of hundreds of thousands. But we’re starting in New Hampshire.”

At the YMCA event, Brodsky saw students paying attention and learning from Taylor.

“They didn’t keep their eyes off what was going on and what she was showing them about how to carve clay and how to make it, so that it would be a permanent piece for them,” Brodsky said.

Diane Fitzpatrick, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester, had an early glimpse of the nonprofit’s impact.

“Open Arts United’s collaboration with the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester is an example of how removing barriers and providing access to different forms of art can make a profound impact. The work Open Arts United is doing nurtures creative expression in the next generation,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement provided to NH Business Review.

“Our members had such an enjoyable time at the puppet show! It brought so much joy and wonder,” she said.

“Their smiles and laughter showed that sometimes the simplest things, like a puppet show, can make the biggest impact on our little ones.”

The board of Open Arts United includes Jada Hebra, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Southern New Hampshire University; Kristen Moy, senior fellow at the Aspen Institute; Theo Martey, artist and music producer; and Tricia Soule, executive director of the NH Business Committee for the Arts and a communications consultant.

Brodsky hopes to encourage other businesses to support the arts, which not only helps support the community but encourages creativity — a valuable tool for business.

“When I went to college, I majored in economics and I minored in art, and I took sculpture. I think I never would have dreamed I would take sculpture, but it opens one’s mind,” Brodsky said. “To be successful in today’s world, you have to be creative. You have to think, like a piece of clay, that you have something and you’re molding it, and you’re not quite sure where it’s going to come out, because the world is changing so quickly.”