The doors are now open to a new building in Canton dedicated solely to arts education for area students. The 15,000-square-foot space houses the nonprofit EN-RICH-MENT, an affiliate of Bluecoats, which provides free arts and life skills programs for underserved youth.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place on Sunday at the EN-RICH-MENT Arts Education Center, which took over a former Ziegler Tire building in the Downtown area.
The new facility has a dedicated dance studio, a commercial kitchen for culinary programs, a sensory-friendly room and plenty of spaces for visual arts and music classes.
EN-RICH-MENT was co-founded in 2012 by Betty Smith, who said the organization had long outgrown its former space located a block away.
“Every year of course, we grow,” Smith said. “We’re averaging 170 kids a week that come to summer camp, and then we’ll do maybe another 75 or 100 after school every day, three days a week. So, we’re serving a lot of youth in the program.”
EN-RICH-MENT welcomes students ages 5-18 that currently represent 79 schools, some of which are located outside of Stark County.
“The parents bring them and want them to be involved in this program,” Smith said. "And I think that’s wonderful.”
In June 2023, EN-RICH-MENT became an affiliate of the Bluecoats, the award-winning drum and bugle corps based in Canton. Together, the two organizations launched a capital campaign to raise $1.75 million to fund the new space.
“We were able to very instantly rally support from some of the largest foundations in Canton as well as city support,” said Mike Scott, CEO of the Bluecoats. “We reached that critical mass where we said, ‘This is something we can absolutely get done.’”
More than $2 million was raised, including many donations from individual households.
“Everyone was able to find a way to make an outsized impact,” Scott said. “In my position, it’s been quite cool to get to watch all these different people in this orbit rally around with the ‘it takes a village spirit.’”
The project also received support from ArtsinStark, the county’s arts council. EN-RICH-MENT’s new home sits on the campus of the Cultural Center for the Arts, the arts district owned and operated by ArtsinStark, Scott said.
The location puts EN-RICH-MENT in proximity to several major cultural institutions, such as the Canton Museum of Art and the Canton Ballet, which makes it easy to further partnerships.
“It's just any and everything you could ever ask for in a community arts program,” said Betty Smith. “ArtsinStark, Bluecoats and EN-RICH-MENT, we’re the talk of the town.”
