Mayo Street Arts

About

Mayo Street Arts is a community arts and performance venue in the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland, Maine. It was founded in 2010 by Blainor McGough after leasing the building which was formerly St. Ansgar Church. Mayo Street Arts' second executive director, Ian Bannon, succeeded McGough in May 2020 following McGough's resignation. Located next to Kennedy Park, a public housing development and close to many other public housing areas, Mayo Street Arts serves as a theater, concert venue, art gallery, and meeting space and offers affordable artist studios, rehearsal space, and a teaching platform for visual and performing artists of multicultural backgrounds. Programming is varied, but with a particular focus on puppetry, folk music, and dance.

One of Mayo Street Arts' first programs was the Children's Puppet Workshop, which incorporated Portland's professional artist community and many children of immigrant families which focuses on puppetry and story-telling.

Mayo Street Arts partners with a number of local organizations, including the East Bayside Neighborhood Association, Learning Works and the Maine College of Art. The venue, which has seating for 110 people, also hosts performances by local musicians who appreciate the building's natural acoustics.

Mayo Street Arts first leased the building on Mayo Street from Roxanne Quimby's charitable foundation, which had owned the building since 2007. It subsequently purchased the building in 2013, after receiving a donation from the Brooks Family Foundation.

Mayo Street Arts was supported the Virginia Somers Hodgkins Foundation in 2011, and in 2018 received a Stand for the Arts award for accessibility improvements.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.