Sunday, January 20, 2008

Hooked on Drums has a New Home!

Anyone who's ever been to the "Hobbithole" will have no problem understanding that Hooked on Drums has been in need of a new home--for a long time. Twenty years of stuff from Africa--instruments, fabrics, photos, miscellaneous artifacts--has been collecting dust in our garage and the nooks and crannies of our coachhouse in Woodlawn for the past decade or so.

The first week of January, we firmed up the details on a contract to rent space as part of an arts partnership with Kennicott Park, and on January 4, I entered the 30' X 30' room with a five gallon bucket of paint--and a vision.

Unfortunately, we did not take "before and afters", nor did we document the week-and-a-half-long transformation of the room--we were too busy patching, pounding and painting to gunk up the camera, and programming was scheduled to begin on January 16. When we started, the room was dreary and dull, done up in industrial green and gray. I managed to scrounge up from my iPhoto library one picture of the space before we moved in, but the shot hardly does justice to the drab:

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Here's what it looks like now:



We didn't have to purchase much aside from paint and painting supplies: everything else--except some of the folding chairs, the stools, a few picture frames and some odds and ends--was already here, cluttering up the hobbithole!

On Tuesday, January 16, the room was initiated by two new groups of toddlers who are participating in a class called "Stories and Songs from Africa":



Later that day, the Nankouma Drum Core held its first rehearsal in the space: