Imagine the following scenario: you're a man or woman who thinks there's more to life than football or basketball and you want to hold an arts event (e.g., a concert, a play, a show for a local painter or sculptor, etc) within the city of College Park. Where would you hold it?

Would you rent a room at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center? I'm guessing you probably wouldn't, unless you had a corporate sponsor. It seems you can't rent a room there for less than $1,000 (rates range from $3,200 for the biggest facility to $1,150 for the smallest, and then there is the stuff the university nickels and dimes you for).

Would you go through The College Park Arts Exchange and try to schedule something at the Old Parish House? You could, but in my experience, the CPAE is only interested in a rather narrow slice of artistic offerings. Bluegrass and stuff for kids is okay, experimental/improvisational music or readings from writers on the "literary edge," not so much.

Do you rent meeting space at some local establishment that just so happens to have a room? You could, of you wanted to host your event upstairs at the Jerk Pit (which I heard has meeting space).

Let's face it: unless you're affiliated with the university, you're chances for exposure to the arts in College Park are limited at best. This needs to change, and the way to do it is to establish a performance space where artists of every stripe—visual artists (painters, sculptors, filmmakers, etc.), musicians (from classical to heavy metal), dance troupes, poets, playwrights, and the rest—could share their work with members of the community. If done right, such a space could potentially give birth to an actual arts community in College Park, something a "great college town" (to borrow a phrase) ought to have.

So how do we get there from here? I would recommend the following two-pronged approach:

1.) You can't have an arts community without the arts, so if you're a local artist whose always wanted to hold an exhibition, opening, concert, etc. within the city, find a suitable venue for your event (the Old Parish House, the College Park Community Center, Davis Hall, the Berwyn Café, that weird outdoor amphitheater thing near the Student Union on the UMD Campus, a street corner, wherever...), pick a date, promote the hell out of it, and then do your thing.

2) At the same time, local artists of every sort need to come together to plot and strategize to establish a performance space within CP's boarders, zero in on sources of funding, and share whatever resources the group might have at its disposal.

I have some ideas, but I'd like to hear from other local artists on this topic—especially if they're interested in doing the work to make an arts community happen in our own backyard. 

Smith is a resident of North College Park and treasurer of the North College Park Citizens Association.