The Children

A Mutual Work of Art

Cincinnati Business Courier

"A Mutual Work of Art"
A local mall found that kids' art can be an attractive draw
Lucy May - Courier Staff Reporter
Published: December 16, 2002

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If Jennifer Baldwin has her way, the cavernous Crestview Hills Mall soon will be teeming with parents whose kids are eager to create and display art.

And that, said mall manager Steve Berry, would not only be good for those families, it also would be good for the mall's business.

Baldwin, regional director of the Southern Ohio/Northern Kentucky Regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, is working on a project she calls Art Machine, a children's art museum with hands-on art instruction, exhibits of local children's artwork and a display of art by children from other countries.

Eventually, Baldwin anticipates that the museum will occupy about 18,000 square feet in the mall — 3,000 square feet on the first floor and 15,000 square feet on the second floor.

The former teacher has been working on the project for several years and has begun to form a board and launch her fund-raising efforts. Baldwin figures she needs $300,000 to build out the first phase of Art Machine and another $100,000 on top of that to help fund the first year's salaries and operations.

She has an aggressive goal of raising the money and having her space at Crestview Hills Mall built out and open by summer 2003. Her fund raising has yet to begin in earnest; she will start once she has a detailed packet of information that she can show to potential funders.

Berry said he was initially a bit skeptical about whether a children's art museum would be a good fit for his mall. The 387,000-square-foot regional mall, anchored by Dillard's at one end and Dillard's Home Store at the other, also has a popular Panera Bread store out front and just a handful of other tenants.

The space for specialty stores between the anchors is less than half full.

Baldwin persuaded Berry to let her use the facility for the regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards last winter, and he quickly bought into her vision.

"That (Scholastic program) brought a lot of people — and not just from Northern Kentucky," Berry said. "A lot of people were just discovering us. When she came in and brought the artwork in and the students came in, we were completely sold."

Berry has agreed to let Baldwin use vacant retail spaces in the mall free of charge for this winter's Scholastic exhibit. And he's allowing her to use a first-floor space near the Payless Shoe Source store rent-free for planning purposes until she gets the space built out for the museum. She did not disclose how much rent Art Machine will pay for the space once it's built out.

Baldwin got excited about locating Art Machine at the mall after visiting a children's museum in Florida with a strong focus on the arts. The museum there had the kinds of hands-on activities that she envisions for Art Machine, and it's located in a strip mall at the end of an expressway in a community very much like Northern Kentucky.

"Attendance there two summers ago was 225,000," Baldwin said.

Crestview Hills Mall, with its location right off of Interstate 275, copious space and ample parking, seemed like the right fit. Even with the good location, Baldwin isn't expecting the fund raising to be easy. As the stock market continues to flounder and government entities cut funding to nonprofits to battle budget problems of their own, established nonprofits are competing more than ever for shrinking pots of available money.

"It's really a challenging environment right now," said Miles Wilson, vice president for grants programs at the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which has not yet been approached about funding Art Machine. "It's not
impossible. But a really compelling case needs to be made for a startup in order for them to get funding. The feeling right now for philanthropy is that we need to work to preserve so many of the good things we already have in the community. We don't want those things to go away."

Baldwin said the build-out of the space won't start until all the necessary funds are raised.

Bob Johnson, a design director with LPK Inc. downtown, said he thinks Baldwin's passion and drive will make the project work.

"So far, the doors have just seemed to open for Jennifer," said Johnson, who has designed Art Machine's logo and corporate identity pro bono for Baldwin.

Baldwin calls the first phase of the Art Machine project The Refrigerator Gallery. There, young children will be able to make art and display it on refrigerator doors affixed to the walls.

There will be other art stations where children can engage in activities with the help of staff, including a sand area and blocks for building. She also envisions an area where older children can use computers to create artwork. Ultimately, Baldwin hopes Art Machine will encompass space on both the first and second floors of the mall.

Art Machine board member Sylvia Fiore, president of ACF Design in Anderson Township, said she was convinced that Baldwin could make Art Machine happen after attending last winter's Scholastic exhibit at the
mall and seeing the throngs of people there.

"After watching that last year, I thought, 'If this girl thinks she can do it, she can do it,'" Fiore said. "And as conservative as this area can be, we do support the arts."