Blackwood / New Jersey / United States
We are dedicated to providing South Jersey youth with arts experiences that lead to: positive interactions with others, a greater sense of self-worth and self-esteem, community involvement, exposure to professional arts & entertainment not readily accessible, recognition of personal strengths & talents and career opportunities in the arts, and a deep and abiding appreciation for the performing arts. Here at Mainstage we Celebrate the Arts! Mainstage Center for the Arts, began in 1989 when President, Edward P. Fiscella, Jr., a teacher at the Glen Landing Middle School in Gloucester Township, answered the plea of his students to create a theater program that would encompass their long summer vacation. With the help of Vice President, Joseph Bretschneider, also an educator, the Gloucester Township Board of Education, and the Department of Recreation, Summer Stage was born! Summer Stage became so successful that it spawned demands for year-round arts programming for youth and families. Mainstage was incorporated in 1994 as the Gloucester Township Center for the Arts, a 501 ( c ) ( 3 ) private non-profit. In 1997, we began to recognize that our organization had a large regional impact, and that our audiences and participants were coming to us from all over the South Jersey area not just Gloucester Township and so we renamed ourselves Mainstage Center for the Arts. We then rented a Studio at 100 South Black Horse Pike in Blackwood, NJ and began to offer dance, voice, and acting classes. We have never owned a theater, and have hence formed mutually beneficial partnerships with the Gloucester Township School System, Camden County College, the Washington Township School System, and others, in order to have access to performance venues. Mainstages programs now reach an annual audience of over 50, 000 and serve over 1, 000 children directly through classes and workshops. An ever larger base of young people is reached through in-school assemblies and educational outreach, sometimes averaging 2, 000 children a program. Mainstage is very proud to be recognized by our community as one of the best performing arts centers in South Jersey, we have won that honor five years in a row from the readers of the Courier Post Newspaper. We were also a finalist in 1998 in the Philadelphia Arts & Business Partnership Awards for our partnership with the firm of McGettigan Partners we were the only South Jersey organization to be nominated. Mainstage is funded through public and private grants, corporate sponsorship, private memberships and individual contributions. We receive financial support for many our programs through funding from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Mainstage Center for the Arts, a member organization of the South Jersey Cultural Association, is a non-profit organization with programming made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. This program is also made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey Cultural Trust.
