Arts Science has Major Scale in New Castle County
Published Apr 16, 2008
Tina Betz visits the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.
People looking at the arts calendar for any New Castle County weekend could be forgiven if they thought they were in a much larger metro area. From theater to opera to symphony concerts to art museums, there’s an astonishing amount of cultural activities from which to choose.
“That’s the message we try to communicate to as many people as possible,” says Tina Betz, director of the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs in Wilmington. “We have a lot of arts organizations around the city and county that are making things happen.”
Betz cites such entities as Opera Delaware, Delaware Theatre Company, DuPont Clifford Brown Jazz Festival and Delaware Symphony Orchestra, and the list goes on down to smaller, but very active, arts organizations.
“We are very strong in the performing and visual arts, even though we live in the shadow of giants like Washington, D.C., and New York,” she says. “One of the things we just instinctively know is that working together is absolutely the way to go. We enter into partnerships all the time, combining our human and financial resources to make things happen.”
Outreach and education are hallmarks of the area’s arts entities. “Arts education is a strong component of almost every arts organization that we have here,” Betz says. “Everybody has been able to identify some audiences that are different than those the other organizations are targeting.”
The Delaware Symphony Orchestra is a case in point. In addition to its ongoing children’s concert series, the orchestra has added a new series, “Concert and Conversation,” featuring a Sunday afternoon concert followed by conductor David Amado taking attendees through the music, movement by movement, offering background on the composer and more.
“We have greatly expanded our outreach to youth in the area, and this series will allow us to do the same with adults,” says Laurie Grant, director of development and marketing for the symphony. I like to say that we have something for everybody, from two to 92.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Stephen Cherry
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