Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts facts for kids

The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts (ELSFA) was started in 1950 by Elma Lewis. This school was located in Roxbury, Boston, and it offered many classes in art, dance, drama, music, and making costumes. Elma Lewis wanted to create "cultural enrichment programs for deprived children" in Roxbury, Dorchester, and the wider Greater Boston area. The school closed its doors at its Elm Hill Avenue location after a fire in 1985.

About Elma Lewis

Elma Ina Lewis (September 15, 1921 – January 1, 2004) grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She went to Emerson College and became a famous American arts educator. Elma Lewis worked hard to support the African American community through the arts. She also dedicated her life to helping others. Because of her work, she was one of the first people to receive the MacArthur Fellows Grant in 1981. She also received a Presidential Medal for the Arts from President Ronald Reagan in 1983. Elma Lewis passed away in 2004 when she was 82 years old.

Starting the School

Elma Lewis opened the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in 1950. It first started in a small, rented 6-room apartment at 7 Waumbeck Street in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The main goal of the school was to teach arts to African-American community members in the Boston area.

On its very first day in 1950, 25 students signed up for classes. Students paid $5 each month to attend.

The ELSFA officially became a non-profit organization on October 19, 1966. This meant it could receive donations and grants more easily. That same year, the school received its first grant from the government.

Where the School Was Located

By 1955, the school had too many students for its first rented space. It moved to 449 Blue Hill Avenue. After this move, the number of students grew to 250! This was ten times more than when it first opened. However, this new spot was not ideal.

In 1964, the school rented a building on Charlotte Street in Dorchester, MA. But after only two years, a church bought the building. The school had to move again.

After spending 1966 at the Lewis Junior High School, the school moved to the Hecht House in Boston for its summer program in 1967. During this summer, Elma Lewis started the Playhouse in the Park Series.

The next year, the ELSFA moved to a much bigger place. It was the former home of a synagogue, on the corner of Elm Hill Avenue and Seaver Street. The building was given to the ELSFA, making it the only Black arts organization at that time to own its own property. The school worked to change twenty rooms in the building. This big project cost a lot of money. In that same year, Elma Lewis also started the National Center of Afro-American Artists.

National Center of Afro-American Artists

Elma Lewis founded the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) in 1968. Its mission is to "preserve and foster the cultural arts heritage of black peoples worldwide." It does this by teaching arts and showing professional works in all art forms. After it was founded, the NCAAA took over running the ELSFA. It became the school's "intellectual dimension." The NCAAA offers many cultural programs and art shows. It also opened the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in 1980.

Exciting Programs

Playhouse in the Park

In 1966, Elma Lewis started the Playhouse in the Park program. This was a summer theater held in Franklin Park in Boston. The idea for this program came from the New York Shakespeare Festival. Between 100 and 3,000 people came to watch the shows every night.

The program ran every year from July 4th through Labor Day until 1977. Over 100,000 people watched the shows during the first season alone. Famous artists like Duke Ellington and Babatunde Olatunji often performed. The series started again in 2002 and still happens every summer in Boston. Today, it includes classic arts but also features Chinese and Irish dance, music from Brazil and the Caribbean, ballet, hip-hop, and tap dance.

MCI Norfolk Prison Theatre

The ELSFA started the Technical Theater Training Program (TTP) at MCI, Norfolk, in July 1970. This program taught drama, playwriting, music, and dance to inmates. Over time, 140 inmates took part in these courses. During the program, ten inmates worked together to write a book. It was called "Who Took the Weight" and was published by Little Brown.

Students and What They Achieved

Between 1958 and 1963, eight former ELSFA students moved to New York. They became professional performers on Broadway. Four students were in the cast of the 1969 "Hello Dolly" starring Pearl Bailey. Other students performed in shows like Ben Franklin Goes to Paris and Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr. The American writer Danzy Senna also attended the school as a child in the late 1970s. In 1964 and 1965, teenage students from the ELSFA performed at the World's Fair in New York City.

Challenges the School Faced

In 1966, the ELSFA received a grant of $3,500. This money was from the National Endowment for the Arts. It was meant to help "teach art, dance, music and drama to public school children" at the Lewis Junior High School in Roxbury. However, the school was later asked to leave the Junior High school. This left the ELSFA without a main location once more.

In 1967, when classes were not in session, the ELSFA received donations. These donations helped keep the school going. During this time, the school's leaders met to decide its future. They also kept looking for a permanent home.

In the early 1970s, the NCAAA started a program called CELEBRATE! This program helped raise money for building repairs and staff salaries. It ran from 1971 to 1973.

By 1980, the school was having serious money problems. The number of students had dropped a lot, from 525 to only 100. The ELSFA was "facing a sizable debt" and did not have enough staff. Experts were hired to create a four-year plan to help the school. They figured out that the ELSFA needed about $1 million each year to run at its best.

That year, the Kennedy Foundation gave the ELSFA a grant. This money helped with building repair costs, but only for one year.

Fires at the School

The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts had several unsolved fires in the 1970s and 1980s. The fires in the 1970s did not cause much damage. Most of the school's records from that time survived. One fire was thought to be caused by a kiln that was left on all night. However, the fires in the 1980s destroyed some records. A serious incident happened in 1985. Flaming materials were thrown into a classroom while a rehearsal was taking place.