Reels Roll, Ribbon Cut At Flint St. Theater

by Allan Appel The New Haven independent

The Friends Center for Children officially cut the ribbon Wednesday on their sparkling 125-seat community-focused movie, music, arts, and events space — uniquely nestled among classrooms at the site of the former Cine 1234 movie theater.

They also quietly announced $3.5 million in bonding just approved by the state.

That means that the pioneering daycare center will be able to launch its phase two, or construction of a second building comprised of six more desperately needed early childhood classrooms at the southern end of its newest campus, which spreads out atop the site of the old movie theater high above Middletown Avenue on Flint Street.

That double-feature of good news was playing at the Flint Street Theater early Wednesday morning, where Executive Director Allyx Schiavone, the center’s teachers, staff, educators from across the city, economic development officials, and friends — 75 folks strong — gathered to toast the good news with hot popcorn and good cheer.

There was also a post-ribbon cutting screening, followed by Q and A, of Preschool to Prison. That’s Dr. Karen Baptiste’s award-winning and recently Emmy-nominated 30-minute documentary, a sobering and hard-hitting look at how lack of educators’ cultural awareness in the earliest grades can lead to excessive and out-of-proportion discipline like detention, expulsion, and even arrests of five and six-year-olds, especially of Black children. The consequence of that is often declining school attendance, eventual dropping out, and serious trouble with the law.

Or as Pia Johnson, a social worker, and one of the principal interviewees in the film, who was in attendance, put it: ​“You want to invest on the front end, or you pay on the back end.”

The goal, said Trey Moore, who is managing the Flint Street Theater, is to make the space accessible for movies such as this, along with music, art, and events that entertain while also generating critical community conversations.

In the past two months of the theater’s soft opening, Moore said that films for kids and for family audiences have continued to be screened on the weekend, with tickets and popcorn always free.

On Sept. 21, Moore is initiating Elm City Reels at the theater, which will be a series focusing on the work of local filmmakers, like Stephen Dest and Travis Carbonella, among others.

And on Sept. 27 there will be a screening of The Price of the Ticket, a kind of documentary anthology of speeches, appearances, interviews on the occasion of the centennial of writer James Baldwin’s birth.

Click here for the full schedule at the Flint Street Theater.

While Moore develops the theater space with an ongoing commitment to using sliding scale fees, to address what he termed one of local artist’s greatest challenges — finding affordable venues for performances and openings — Schiavone and her team are now launched on phase two.

Meetings with architects begin later this week to expand what is officially termed The Flint Street Family Campus of Friends Center for Children.

There will be six classrooms in the planned building, which means space for 48 more infants and toddlers, along with offices and a library, Schiavone added.

She termed the approval of the $3.5 million (the balance of the total $7 million project is already in place) a validation of the critical societal importance of culturally sensitive early childhood education, along with innovations to enhance the profession that Friends Center is leading.

These include providing pre-school teacher housing, among other benefits to build sustainability into what is alas a far too low-aid profession.

And as if to demonstrate as well as show off its spirit and style, Val Shaw, the school’s head infant and toddler teacher, attended Wednesday’s festivities wearing her cool new white Friends Center monogrammed sneakers. 

Every ten-year veteran — there are now four at the school — receives a pair, said Schiavone. 

No word yet on what teachers get to put on their feet at the Friends Center when they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years. 

Perhaps a movie screening of their choice at the Flint Street Theater?

Allan Appel photo

Friends Center’s Executive Director Allyx Schiavone and Preschool to Prison director/producer Dr. Karen Baptiste.