MAYO STREET ARTS
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Mission Statement
Mayo Street Arts strives to strengthen its neighborhood and community by providing a haven for the arts that is vibrant, safe, and inspiring; and to engage area youths of diverse cultural communities in robust participation in the visual, performing, and literary arts.
About This Cause
Mayo Street Arts (MSA) is a welcoming community arts center in the heart of East Bayside’s Kennedy Park: the most densely populated, ethnically and culturally diverse square mile in Maine. Our building serves as a performance venue, gallery, and gathering space, and offers affordable studios and rehearsal space for artists. Our programming embraces variety, with a particular focus on puppetry and folk music and dance. MSA is committed to making our programs accessible to all — removing financial barriers through pay-what-you-can tickets for all events, and mobility barriers with the addition of a wheelchair lift. MSA deeply engages the people we serve in all phases of our programming, including the incorporation of artist and student-led steering committees. In addition to visual and performing arts programs, we are dedicated to community enrichment. MSA offers audiences opportunities to participate in the forms they see on our stage through workshops with visiting artists, puppet slams, and open mics. MSA is also proud to conduct free year-round youth & family programming. This includes all-ages performances, a slate of after-school classes, a literacy-rich summer camp, multigenerational classes, and our East End Community School Partnership, which brings performances and workshops with visiting artists directly into our local elementary school. In collaboration with Cultural Resources and the Maine Arts Commission, MSA operates the Traditional Arts Network (TAN). Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, TAN is a consortium of traditional artists and ensembles who wish to preserve and share their artistic and cultural practices. TAN pools resources to offer support financially in the form of microgrants, as well as opportunities for marketing, grant-writing, networking, and more. In 2022, MSA launched Puppets in Portland (PiP), a biannual city-wide festival of international puppetry arts — a natural evolution of MSA’s commitment to supporting and sharing puppetry in all of its wondrous forms.