Month: February 2015

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Grizzlies at the Break

Anyone who says they thought the Grizzlies would be in this position — 38-13, second in the Western Conference standings, with Marc Gasol as an All-Star starter and Zach Randolph playing the best basketball he’s played since the Griz knocked off the top-seeded Spurs in 2011 — is probably not being truthful. My season preview in these pages said that the Grizzlies had a good chance to have the best season in franchise history, and even I didn’t quite think they’d be doing this.

That’s not to say that all of the questions about this year’s team have been answered. In the aftermath of Tayshaun Prince’s and Quincy Pondexter’s trade for Jeff Green and Russ Smith, the Grizzlies’ offense — already much diversified from the way they used to play during the Lionel Hollins years — continues to evolve. But even though Green’s athleticism gives the Griz a whole new element to deploy, his lack of outside shooting (Green is a career 44-percent shooter, 33 percent from 3-point range) means that the Griz still have to operate in the narrow windows of floor spacing they’re able to create.

Vince Carter’s recent injury is a depressing exclamation mark on an underwhelming season, with Carter never quite finding his shot nor becoming the outside threat the Grizzlies signed him to be. Though he’s expected to return this season, teams weren’t even guarding Carter from three-point range before the injury, leaving him wide open to miss. With the addition of Green and Carter’s continued struggles to get on track (followed by his absence), the Grizzlies still haven’t solved the problem we’ve been talking about for years now: the lack of a floor-spacing knock-down 3-point shooter. Courtney Lee filled the role earlier in the season but has slowly begun to regress to his career averages. Shooting is still something the Griz just don’t quite have enough of — but it may be a moot point, now that the offense is beginning to fully integrate Green’s athletic attacks on the rim and his ability to draw attention away from Gasol and Randolph just enough for those two to operate.

The biggest stories of the season for the Grizzlies are, without question, the two guys who were the most important players coming into the season: Gasol and Randolph. Gasol continues to play at a level that has him getting serious discussion as an MVP candidate, aggressively carrying the Grizzlies’ offense when he has to. Randolph, meanwhile, is playing the best basketball he’s played since his 2012 knee injury, having ceded his “first option” duties to Gasol and Mike Conley only to reclaim them in a lengthy streak of double-doubles in January and February.

The real question is whether the Griz can win an NBA title this year, and with the Western Conference still wide open, it seems like all of the preseason talk about “this could be the year” is still very much in play: This really could be the year. Assuming the rest of the conference standings shake out somewhat close to the way they are now, the Grizzlies could catch the Spurs in the first round, which wouldn’t be optimal, but barring that, a return trip to the Western Conference finals seems like a reasonable outcome.

The Griz are good enough to make it to the NBA Finals this season — whether or not they do seems like it will come down to playoff matchups and which teams they have to face to get there. There are few teams with whom the Griz don’t match up well, and even those teams don’t feel impossible to beat the way the Grizzlies’ archrivals have in years past. (I don’t expect the regular season troubles, mostly injury-related, that the Spurs are experiencing to carry over to the postseason. Betting against San Antonio doesn’t seem wise , no matter the situation.)

This is already the best team in the history of the Grizzlies franchise, regardless of what they’re able to accomplish after the regular season. They’re a veteran group used to playing with each other, with a great deal of trust and faith in each other and a real shared desire to bring the NBA title to Memphis this June. With the remaining games of the season, the challenge is whether they can continue to improve and steel themselves for the approaching challenges of playoff basketball, and whether they can continue to win games at the rate they’ve been doing it so far.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A School-Schedule Fix

A real estate principle known as “highest and best use” posits that a property’s use should produce the highest value, regardless of its actual current use. Such is not the case with middle and high schools, here and across the nation, where these multi-million dollar buildings pretty much lie fallow between the hours of 3 p.m. and 7 a.m. Taxpayers deserve better.

So do the students. A spate of recent articles reminds us that sleep cycles of older adolescents differ from children and adults, in that their melatonin does not kick in until nearly 11:30 p.m. and they need approximately 9 hours of sleep each night. This means that waking up before 8:30 a.m. is bad for their health. This research has been validated and globally replicated for decades.  

We already know that metabolism in adults is affected by sleep deprivation and that weight gain, diabetes, and heart disease often result. But we want to shoe-horn teens into an adult schedule that we know harms human health for few reasons other than tradition.

Prominent psychologist John Rosemond argues that later start times for teenagers merely coddle them and they need to just turn off their electronic devices and get to bed early. But the endocrine system does not take its orders from even well-meaning and learned adults.  

The solution lies in arranging our school schedules in a way that benefits students and prevents the necessity of building separate middle and high schools. Collierville and Lakeland, take note.

My own Florida school was forced to revamp its schedule when our senior high experienced crowding so great that the school day was divided into two sessions: 7 a.m. to noon for sophomores and noon to 5 p.m. for juniors and seniors. A similar rethinking of start times and grade segmentation ought to be seriously considered in Shelby County.

As any parent of a young child will tell you, keeping them in bed past sunrise on the weekend is no easy task. So, start the youngest children (grades K-5) at 7 a.m. and end their day at 3 p.m. or thereabouts, which would necessitate providing only after-school care instead of both before- and after-care.  

For middle schoolers (grades 6-8), the day would begin at 8:30 a.m. and end five hours later at 1:30 p.m., at which time high schoolers (grades 9-12) would start their day, ending at 6:30 p.m. 

Since sleep science has proven that absenteeism and tardiness decline when older adolescents start later, and grades and scores go up while car accidents go down, this would prove beneficial for everyone. We also know the time for teenagers to engage in risky behaviors is when they are most awake: between the end of school and the time their parents arrive home.

The four basic courses with time for changing classes and a healthy, on-the-go meal would substitute for the speed-dining 26 minutes our kids get now. Both would fit into the new five-hour schedule, while electives and extracurricular choices would occur after school for early students, and before classes for later students. Since buses do not currently function as a private limo service by waiting around for students according to their activities, nothing would change except that we might need fewer buses because they’d be more efficient. 

Here’s an example: After delivering elementary kids, drivers would be picking up middle schoolers. While the middle-schoolers were in school, the buses would pick up high schoolers, who would be disgorged in time for the middle schoolers to board immediately. In the lull between the beginning of high school and its end, elementary kids would be picked up. After depositing them, drivers would go back to the high school to pick up the last session. As a result, there would be far fewer empty buses rattling around town.

Since many after-school jobs are fast food and retail, both of which stay open late, and since high schoolers would be waking later, working until closing would not rob them of sleep.

Fewer dollars tied up in construction and maintenance means more money for full-time art and music teachers and coaches who just coach, while a shorter class day gives teachers more planning time. Administrative functions would require a few more people, but not an entirely separate staff. There are teachers and others who won’t like a new schedule, but school is for kids; their needs come first.

And taxpayers’ interests shouldn’t be sacrificed to erect buildings that stand as monuments to nostalgia and inefficiency for 16 hours a day.

Categories
Music Music Features

Mavis Staples at GPAC

Mavis Staples will perform at the Germantown Performing Arts Center on Friday, February 13th. Luther Dickinson will open. Based on their involvement with the film Take Me to the River, there may well be a grey line between the opener and main event. And anywhere Mavis goes is an event. No other musical act can rival her historical importance. Bono and Geldoff, for all of the philanthropy, were never on the front lines of anything.

For her and the civil rights generation, music was “message music.” Her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples was among those who worked at Dockery Plantation: Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf. Mavis was born after her father migrated to Chicago. Pops struggled until his family and his primordial tremolo guitar struck a chord with audiences in the late 1950s. The Staple Singers were a popular acoustic gospel act for a decade before a 1965 show in Montgomery, where they met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That experience inspired a round of protest songs that placed the Staples at the vanguard of the movement. They signed with Stax in 1968 but didn’t have their first hit until 1971’s “Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom Boom).”

Mavis Staples

But through all of the heavy history, Mavis has sung earthy gospel soul that is a perfect mix of unflinching honesty and uplifting empowerment. In her solo work, Mavis still keeps a devout focus on the struggle. Her song “With My Own Eyes” — from her solo album We’ll Never Turn Back — is a first person testament of her experiences, one of which was a run-in with the Memphis police in 1964. Her recent turn in Take Me to the River reveals an artist on another plane. She is joyous and infectious. Why doesn’t she have a Nobel Peace prize?

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Playhouse’s Rocky Horror is too much of a good thing.

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. It seemed a fairly ordinary night when Bill Andrews — a Rocky Horror veteran — sat down in a sturdy, conservative, high-backed chair to tell the story of Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, two young, ordinary, healthy kids from the happy, perfectly normal town of Denton, on what was supposed to be a normal night out … a night they were going to remember for a very long time. While Andrews is (as always) spot-on as the musical’s narrator/criminologist, this introduction underscores everything that’s wrong with Playhouse on the Square’s incredibly fun, undeniably fab but somewhat gutted production of Richard O’Brien’s decadent, glam-rock fairy tale. While Dr. Frank-N-Furter is obviously the star of this horror show, its story is presented as a case study: the strange tale of Brad and Janet, their harrowing journey out of innocence. It’s basically Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel but with electric guitars, aliens, and erotic candy. And for all of the goodness that happens in this production, it really is unfortunate that, after the opening sequences, these two characters — finely acted by Jordan Nichols and Leah Beth Bolton — almost fade into the background, and none of the other characters are ever allowed to really savor their moments in the spotlight. Once Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Jerre Dye) prances on stage as everybody’s favorite transvestite, it’s hard to even see anybody else.

There are basically two ways to stage Rocky Horror. You can either highlight the musical’s narrative threads, a weave of British pantomime, the Brothers Grimm, and classic drive-in cinema. Or you can say goodbye to all that and give yourself over to absolute decadence. Director Scott Ferguson chooses the later, which makes his show short on dynamic tension but big on jolts delivered directly to an audience’s pleasure centers. His vision of Rocky Horror is a pansexual psycho beach party fantasia complete with fast (but faulty) cars, zombies, tons of choreography, and some inventive video projection.

If you’ve heard that Dye’s performance as Frank-N-Furter is the greatest thing that ever happened, you’ve not heard wrong. Dye can work those heels and sell what he’s got. If Rocky Horror has a musical heart it’s “Hot Patootie” (“I Really Love That Rock-and-Roll”). With its 1950s swagger and its PG-rated backseat make-out lyrics, it’s the heteronormative baseline from which all else is extrapolated. It’s also the dimmest spot in Playhouse’s floorshow, treated like a throwaway until Frank breaks out his chainsaw to end it.

To borrow an idea from Mary Shelley and a line from songwriter Stephin Merritt, I think this show needs a new heart. Given a chance, all this sexy silliness can suckerpunch you with an emotional wallop. It starts when Eddie and Columbia are separated in “Hot Patootie.” Things heat up when Frank discovers the line between extreme and “too extreme,” and sings “I’m Going Home.” It all comes together as Brad and Janet struggle to find their way back home in the haunting “Superheroes.” And the audience is left to contemplate time, space, and meaning in the wistful, minor key reprise of “Science Fiction Double Feature.” We don’t really get to experience any of that this time around, but does it matter? Emotion is a powerful and irrational master, but so is pleasure. And, based on what I eagerly viewed on stage at Playhouse, the audience was clearly its slave. Using almost no scenery, Playhouse’s energetic, mostly able ensemble, delivers about as much fun as a person can have with their clothes on. Or half off. Or even fully off in some truly pathetic cases. You know who you are.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Mole for Valentine’s Day

CREDIT: Ari LeVaux

It wasn’t Valentine’s Day when Tita prepared a mole (“mow-lay”) with chocolate, almonds, and sesame seeds in Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate. It was a mole that, if Cupid were God, would have been for her to eat alone with Pedro, the man she loved. Instead, the mole was for a banquet honoring the firstborn child of Pedro and his wife Rosaura, Tita’s sister.

“The secret is to make it with love,” Tita tells a guest who wants her recipe. And she means it. As Tita grinds the almonds and sesame seeds together, Pedro walks into the kitchen and is transfixed by the sight of Tita’s body ungulating as she works the stone with energy and grace. They share a passionate gaze and can no longer hide their love.

The word mole comes from molli, an Aztec word that translates into sauce, mixture, or concoction. There are as many ways to make mole as there are kitchens in Mexico, but essentially it’s a ground paste of roasted chile peppers, nuts, seeds, fruit, and spices.

Ari LeVaux

Ingredients for mole

Mole is a celebratory dish served at the best of occasions, where it often headlines the meal. The idea of chocolate in a main course might seem odd, but historically, chocolate was served bitter and spicy, like the Aztec brew Cortez drank from a golden cup. Sweet chocolate as we know it comes from Europe, while modern mole, in its myriad forms, incorporates many ingredients the Europeans brought to the New World.

I’m going to share a mole recipe that was inspired by Tita’s, though I’ve tweaked it for V-Day by increasing the chocolate, and served the mole with chicken instead of the walnut-fattened turkeys Tita used. This mole is spectacular with wild game birds as well.

Remove the skin from a chicken and simmer it with a carrot, an onion, and two stalks of celery, all whole. When the chicken is falling-apart soft (1-2 hours), remove from heat and let cool. Pull out the bones and stuff.

Meanwhile, heat a heavy pan on medium. Toast, and then set aside the following:

¼ cup pumpkin seeds, toasted until they start to pop; ¼ cup almonds; ¼ cup pecans; ¼ cup sesame seeds; ¼ cup cocoa seeds or nibs; and ¼ cup peanuts, all toasted until brown.

(If you want to follow Tita’s recipe more closely, omit the pecans, pumpkin seeds, and raisins, below.)

Remove the stems and seeds of 3 dried pasilla chiles, 3 dried anchos, and a mulato (or substitute with poblano or guajillo). Break the chile skins into pieces, and then toast in the pan until crispy, but not burnt. Set aside.

Toast the chile seeds until dark brown, set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan, and fry a half-cup of raisins, stirring often, until they puff up.

Add more oil, sauté 5 cloves of garlic and a medium onion. Tear apart a bread roll, toast the chunks, and fry the chunks for 10 minutes with the garlic and onions.

With a mortar and pestle or spice grinder, grind 2 inches of cinnamon stick, 1 teaspoon each of black peppercorns and coriander, ½ teaspoon of anise seeds, and 5 whole cloves.

Put the roasted nuts and seeds in a food processor, run it until they’re pulverized, and begin adding the shards of chile. If at any point the food processor’s contents get too thick, add broth from the chicken pot. Add 3 tablespoons chocolate (double that if you couldn’t find cocoa seeds or nibs to roast). 

Add the fried onion garlic bread, and one-half of the ground spices. Keep adding just enough chicken broth so it all keeps getting sucked through the blades.

Tease apart the chicken flesh and reheat it in enough stock to cover it.

Scoop a cup of your mole paste into the cooking chicken and mix everything really well. After it’s simmered together for 10 minutes, taste it. Add more ground spice from the mortar and pestle if you want. Add sugar, one teaspoon at a time, stirring, mixing, and tasting, until it just starts to taste sweet. Mole, like love, is bittersweet, and its flavor depends on this delicate balance.

Salt to taste. Cook another half-hour, until it starts to thicken.

Chicken mole is often served with rice or tortillas. I prefer to tear a few corn tortillas into pieces and add them to the mole 5 minutes before it’s done cooking, and then serve it in a bowl, garnished with chopped onions. A glass of red wine makes a great accompaniment. The wine’s acidic earthiness enhances the flavors of the mole.

Or, you can skip the chicken, use water or stock to facilitate the food processor stage, and serve the mole any number of ways — including straight, with a spoon, or combined with equal parts mayo to make molennaise, a great spread, dip, or edible body paint.

Tita’s mole did not create the passion that she and Pedro shared but allowed it to surface. And so, too, will your interpretation whet the appetite of any passions, if indeed they exist, between you and your Valentine. Hopefully, this love will be less star-crossed than Pedro’s and Tita’s.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Learn to be a farmer at Roots Memphis Farm Academy.

CREDIT: Roots Memphis Farm Academy group

Lauren Farr has a lot on her plate. This 31-year-old mother of two works full-time as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department — not to mention, she’s five months’ pregnant. So what does she do with her free time?

Well, obviously, she’s becoming a farmer. When I met her, she was up to her elbows in potting soil, seeding some snapdragons in a greenhouse at Shelby Farms.

Roots Memphis Farm Academy group

Lauren Farr

“It’s what I’ve always wanted,” she says, wiping a bit of dirt off her nose. “I just always figured I’d run out of money trying to figure out how to do it.”

Farr is a student at Roots Memphis Farm Academy. It’s a two-and-a-half year program that will teach her how to run a sustainable, profitable food business — everything from germinating bok choy to stopping killer aphids. But what’s even more important, says Roots co-founder Mary Riddle, is learning to balance the books.

“You’ve got to pencil a profit before you can plow a profit,” she says. “You can’t change the world if you go out of business.”

The concept is simple enough. Take two things that Memphis has in spades: empty land and available workers. Put them together, add a few seeds and some fertilizer, and what do you get? Sustainable business development, food relief for America’s hungriest city, and — maybe best of all — some darn good veggies.

“I think the best part,” says 24-year-old Taylor Edwards, “is just being outside, you know? Getting your hands dirty. There’s no one hanging over you. You’re free.”

Students spend their first six months at Roots in the classroom, learning to keep records and make financial models for every crop they grow. It’s tough stuff, and only about half the recruits who start out ultimately make it through. But the knowledge is essential, says Riddle, because a poor grasp of economics is why so many small farms fail.

John Klyce Minervini

Wes and Mary Riddle

“On our first day of class,” Riddle says, “we tell them, you are an entrepreneur, and there is exactly zero separation between you and your business.

“If you want to buy a tractor in three years, you need to start working on your credit now. You need to know how much that tractor will depreciate every year.”

From the classroom, students graduate to Shelby Farms, where each is given a quarter-acre of land to farm. There they work together, sharing tools and insights, to grow food for the Roots CSA, a vegetable subscription service.

After two years, when they have demonstrated that they can run a successful business, these future farmers start working with Roots to secure access to start-up capital and land — in many cases, blighted inner-city lots. Then they’re off.

Roots has been around since August 2013, and it’s getting ready to graduate its first class of four farmers.

“Farming is hard work,” Riddle says. “When it’s 105 degrees out and the tomatoes are cracking, you still have to go out and pick them. Obviously, that’s not for everybody.”

A full ride at Roots costs $1,800. Roots is able to keep that number low because of income from its CSA, as well as a grant from an anonymous donor. They also offer financial aid on a sliding scale.

“We actually had one person pay us in $30 increments,” recalls Riddle. “That’s what she could afford, and we really wanted to work with her.”

What really got my attention was how young everybody is. In a nation where the average farmer is 57 years old, this is a group of fresh-faced 20-somethings. What gives?

“Over the last 10 years, there has been a movement of young people entering the field of farming. Which is great, because our farmers are aging, and we’ll still need to eat after they die,” Riddle says.

“I think everyone in our program has been driven to create a business that matters, a business that’s kind to the earth, a business that’s making a positive social impact. They are driven to fix a broken food system, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

Liam Boyd would agree with that. At 22, he’s one of the program’s success stories, growing huge bushels of bok choy, kale, and arugula for the Roots CSA. But for Boyd — who hails from North Memphis — learning to farm has a more personal significance.

“Where I’m from,” he says, “you’re either unemployed, working a dead-end job, or you’re doing something illegal. But I tell my friends, This is my hustle. I’m growing vegetables, and I’m making more money than all y’all.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

“Investigations” at Masonic Contemporary

Artist and curator Jason Miller says he’s just beginning to lay the groundwork for a new commercial gallery, but he also wants to continue working in an educational, non-commercial vein, and this week marks the official launch of a new venture called Masonic Contemporary. Building on the successes of recent exhibitions, Masonic Contemporary uses the Scottish Rite building as a not-for-profit museum and performing-arts venue where new artworks and original performances will be presented alongside century-old Masonic artifacts, in a building that is a unique time capsule in and of itself.

The first Masonic Contemporary exhibit is titled “Investigations” and collects work by Jeff Mickey and Jean Flint, who are husband and wife artists who teach at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. “He does these amazing kinetic pieces that are large and will look really good in the space,” Miller says. “He went through the grad program at the University of Memphis, and that’s where I first saw his work. His wife Jean also makes amazing, extravagant sculptures.”

“Investigations”

Miller’s last Scottish Rite exhibition was a large group exhibition of works by nearly 50 artists that invited visitors to explore the entire temple and theater. This time, he walked the artists through the vast mural- and artifact-laden environment to decide where the work might fit best.

“This is going to be more like a spotlight series,” Miller says. “And you’re going to see a lot more of these intimate shows.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Wanda Wilson Memorial

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Craig Brewer is trying to figure out the best way to honor the life and legacy of Wanda Wilson, the Midtown muse, and former P&H Cafe proprietress, who was interred in her hometown of Parsons, Tennessee. The Poor & Hungry filmmaker, who went on to success in Hollywood with movies like Hustle & Flow and Footloose, doesn’t know if it’s something that can be accomplished in a single event.

“I feel like the arts community needs to check in with each other again,” he says, wondering if there’s anything in Memphis quite like the P&H was when Wanda held court at a little round table at the end of the bar.

Brandon Dill

Wanda Wilson

“You know, if Wanda didn’t exist, if I had just created her for a movie, somebody would say, ‘Craig, you can’t just will somebody like this into existence because you think it would be cool,'” he says, remembering how the earthy, feather-draped beertender had given him such good advice when he was just starting out as a filmmaker.

“She was so instrumental in my career and in my life,” Brewer says. “What I’m left with is this feeling that there isn’t anybody else like her. There’s nobody who’s this fulcrum of all these different people and artists.”

The local arts community and all other denizens of the P&H Cafe can “check in” to pay their respects at “Wanda: A Celebration of the Life of Wanda Wilson” at Playhouse on the Square on Saturday, February 14th.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Mid-South Greenprint Outlines Sustainability Projects

The Mid-South Regional Greenprint and Sustainability Plan has laid out ideas for how the region can become more eco-friendly by 2040.

The greenprint, which outlines everything from sustainable uses for area green spaces to improving public transit, was released on February 5th after two years of development and research. A vision plan for the greenprint was initially released in 2013.

In 2011, the county was given a $2.6 million grant to prepare for the plan, which aims to “enhance regional sustainability by establishing a unified vision for a region-wide network of green space areas.”

The plan covers Shelby County; Fayette County; Crittenden County, Arkansas; and DeSoto County, Mississippi.

By setting the stage for green-focused efforts, the plan also aims to set in motion a healthier Mid-South by providing more options in terms of transportation, food, housing, and physical activity.

One of the main focuses of the plan is transportation with a focus on providing more bicycle- and public-transit options. Although Memphis fares better than its surrounding counties when it comes to public transit, the plan looks at improving those options for the entire Mid-South.

“While downtown Memphis is a critical hub for population, employment, and commerce, the spread of population and employment density extends throughout the region, suggesting the need for greater connectivity to population and employment across all modes of transportation,” the plan reads.

In the greenprint, 196 miles of bicycle-friendly streets are laid out, including areas in which off-road routes are not feasible. Within these miles, 41 existing on-road bicycle facilities already align with the concept.

The plan also aims to growing a network of “green space hubs,” as well as improving existing parks in the area.

Major hubs that will be improved upon include the West Memphis Eco-Park, named as a “critical hub” in the plan, which will be across the Harahan Bridge on the Arkansas side; the eight-acre Friendship Park project in east Shelby County; and the new plan for the Loosahatchie Rver Greenway in Arlington, among others in Millington and DeSoto County.

The sustainability plan also describes efforts to provide fair housing by increasing access to neighborhoods for people with disabilities and those with lower incomes, as well as access to public transportation and walkability. The goal is to provide more pedestrian-friendly options for neighborhoods.

One example in the plan is part of the Frayser 2020 development, a neighborhood council-driven project that would create a new town center in the area. The town center at Frayser Boulevard and Overton Crossing will include a town square, social services, retail, and a transit hub.

The next step for the greenprint is government approval in the various muncipalites named in the plan. The Shelby County Commission has already approved the plan.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Teen Learning Lab to Open in Benjamin Hooks Library

CREDIT: Stephanie White

Young, aspiring entertainers, business moguls, and video game designers may benefit from a forthcoming 8,300-square-foot teen learning lab at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

The state-of-the-art lab will offer teens everything from video production equipment and video game creation software to a performance space and an art studio.

The construction phase for the facility, which is coined Cloud901, broke ground last Wednesday. A room on the library’s first floor, which will be used for a portion of the learning lab, was packed with city and county officials, library representatives, and local youth.

Stephanie White

Mayor A C Wharton and a teen at the learning lab announcement

Thea Wilkens-Reed, a home-schooled 11th grader, was there. An aspiring lawyer, educator, and news anchor, Wilkens-Reed said she thinks Cloud901 will be a valuable asset to youth in the community.

“It provides an outlet for us to explore our dreams and passions,” said Wilkens-Reed, president of the library’s Teen Advisory Council. “This lab is extremely important to the youth because it will be a safe environment where local teens can have free access to the latest top-of-the-line technology in one location, here in the heart of Memphis.”

Projected to cost around $2 million, more than $1.5 million has already been raised through private donations.

The first portion of the center will be located in a designated area on the library’s ground floor. One corner of the room will feature a video production lab, where teens can shoot and/or edit commercials, interviews, films, and music videos. There will be a sound mixing lab and sound isolation booths in another corner, where aspiring artists and audio engineers can record and mix music.

A technology gallery, projection screen, and brainstorming center are some of the other resources that will be offered on the learning lab’s first floor. A staircase in the middle of the ground floor will lead teens to the lab’s second floor, where additional amenities will be available.

“We are looking forward to creating a community of innovators who are on the cutting edge of technology,” said Janae Pitts-Murdock, teen services coordinator for the Memphis Public Library. “We believe that through this learning center, we’re able to develop the types of skills that teens will need to be successful in their future. We want them to have a learning space where they’re able to pursue their passions, explore their interests, [and] career paths. We want to make a substantive and visible impact on the future prosperity and productivity of youth in Memphis.”

One area of the lab’s second floor will offer an art studio where teens can draw, color, and paint. And “creation stations” will allow for clothing design and creating layouts for publications.

There will also be a gaming zone for aspiring video game designers. They’ll be able to learn game coding and technology, utilize game-creation software, and, of course, play video games.

And a performance stage will be used to help teens develop oratorical skills, perform music they recorded in the lab’s sound booths, and recite poems or speeches in front of an audience. The area in front of the stage will hold an audience of about 100 people.

“This is the beginning of something wonderful,” said Keenon McCloy, executive director of the Memphis Public Library. “We hear so much about teens in the community. The library is really one of the places that levels the playing field and reduces or eliminates barriers to access.”