Area Arts

Fiddlehead Center for the Arts Opens at Pineland

New Gloucester -- This fall, children in Cumberland and Androscoggin Counties have a new place to go after school for classes in fine arts, drama, crafts, and foreign language. The new Fiddlehead Center for the Arts will be open for classes in September at New Gloucester Hall, on the campus of the beautifully renovated Pineland, Route 231 in New Gloucester.

Fiddlehead began a pilot project at a temporary site in Gray last winter, providing private and group instruction in piano, guitar, drama, Spanish, drawing, painting, paper engineering, and many other areas. Classes filled quickly, with more than 100 students from surrounding towns enrolling in the Center’s first sessions. It was clear parents in this part of rural Maine were looking for enriching activities for their children after-school. “These families would have had to
drive their children to Portland or Lewiston-Auburn to find qualified instructors,” said Fiddlehead
Co-founder and Managing Director Jacinda Castro. “That’s just impossible for most working families.” Once Fiddlehead opens at Pineland, Castro says the center will be able to serve up to 400 children each year. In addition to offering its own programs, it will work in partnership with other entities like the Children’s Theater of Maine.

MSAD 15, which serves Gray and New Gloucester, has agreed to provide bus service to Pineland from all five of its schools, enabling children to be dropped off directly at the Center afterschool. Castro is hopeful that other area school districts will also offer bus service so that children in nearby districts can also take advantage of the Center’s offerings. Castro points out that it makes sense for communities to help solve the “after school problem” so many families face. And with most schools able to offer only limited exposure to the arts and foreign languages (especially in the critical early years), afterschool enrichment programs are springing up to meet the need in most major cities. Now children in the communities north of Portland will have some of the same advantages.

Fall classes for children in grades pre-K through grade 12 as the Fiddlehead Center for the Arts get underway at Pineland in Mid-September. This fall’s offerings include: Clay, theatre, piano, guitar, voice, painting, drawing, cartooning, Spanish, French, Kindermusik and more. Classes will fill quickly so sign up early. To receive a free schedule, call the center at 688-2244.

Antiques Appraisal Day

Sunday August 11, at the 1839 Universalist Meetinghouse at 1131 Intervale Road (Rt. 231), New Gloucester from 1-4 p.m. No fees, though donations are welcome. Appraisals by Jim Cyr of Cyr Auction Company of Gray, Maine will do the appraisals. The event is sponsored by The New Gloucester Historical Society.