ConnCAT | Culture & Community | Dixwell | Education & Youth | Hamden | Arts & Culture | ConnCORP
Top: Teacher William Fluker, who has been a steady and beloved presence at ConnCAT for years. Bottom: Student Amari Watts. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Amari Watts looked out over a Morse Street auditorium, her eyes resting on a trio of educators fanned out across the front row. Something in her gaze was fiery and fierce, even before a word had left her mouth. She lifted the microphone, and began to tell a story.
“Southern trees bear strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,” she sang, her voice soulful, splintering just a little at the edges. It dipped and lingered painfully on the words. “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
Around the room, where 62 kids had been chatting just moments before, it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. At the keyboard, music teacher William Fluker looked up, careful not to miss a moment. All of them seemed to understand that it was Watts in front of them, but the spirit of Billie Holiday lived on through her.
That confidence, which Watts has built over several summers of arts learning with the Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology (ConnCAT) was front and center last week, as she joined over five dozen classmates on the stage to celebrate and center the role of Black music, dance, art and culture in young people’s lives. Titled “The Year of Legacy,” the program took on a full century of Black history through the arts, tracing its journey from 1926 to 2026.
In final performances Thursday and Friday at ConnCAT’s new Dixwell Avenue home and the LAB at ConnCORP, all of them had a chance to show off what they’ve learned, from multi-media visual art to music, theater, poetry and dance The two nights build on a tradition of celebrating students that has long been part of ConnCAT’s mission, both during the school year and well beyond it.
“What makes this work worth it is watching the kids finding it [the passion] within themselves,” said Youth Program Manager Rachel “Rocky” Graziano (pictured above), who ran point on the program for the first time this year, at a dress rehearsal Thursday. “If they weren’t locked in,” the whole concept of the showcase would fall apart. But in the past six weeks, every student has found at least one art form that they’re genuinely excited about.
“You guys have proven in six weeks that you are the most talented young people I have met in the city so far,” she later told students. Even as rehearsal rolled on, the words remained in the air, giving students the boost that they needed.
Just as in years past, it has taken a village to pull it off, including several alumni who were once bright-eyed students in the program themselves. On the cusp of the summer months, staff members found themselves thinking through the theme, which in recent years has ranged from a centennial celebration of hip hop to funk to the Harlem Renaissance.
Ultimately, they decided on “A Century of Legacy,” which could pull from movements as wide-ranging as swing, Kansas City jazz, R&B, bebop, soul, neo-soul, rock, disco, hip hop and pop. In keeping with the theme, they also divided students into four ConnCAT-specific “houses” named after the organization’s founders—the House of Strickland, House of McCraven, House of Clemons, and House of Highsmith.
“It’s been amazing,” Graziano said, crediting fellow teachers William Fluker, Nikki Claxton, Jasmine Powell, and Brendan Linehan for guiding students along the way. By the time they welcomed 62 students into the program in July—kids range from 9 to 17 years old, meaning that they have a range of different social and developmental needs—they were able to hit the ground running.
Educator Steve Driffin, a poet and playwright who is now the director of programs for ConnCAT, also assisted along the way. For years, he built and stewarded the program.
At a dress rehearsal Thursday, that enthusiasm was on full display, flowing from the stage to a crowded duo of costume racks and donated outfits at the front of the room. A few summer students buzzed around the auditorium with cameras and recording devices (phones, candy colored in their cases, sat in a cabinet with cubby holes at the front of the room) as others slipped into costume in the bathrooms and arranged themselves in the wings, going over places one last time.
Graziano checked the time; it was just a few minutes past noon, and the group was mostly still on schedule. “We’re just waiting a few minutes for Mr. Fluker and then we’ll get started,” she told students before turning back to a costume rack, and fiddling with a rainbow-patterned outfit. In one hand, she held a folded set list with 53 numbers, from Little Anthony’s “Tears on My Pillow” to Teena Marie’s “Square Biz” to dance routines set to MJ and Kendrick.
In one corner of the gym, 13-year-old Bruce Dean Fairfax prepared for his performance as a young Michael Jackson, circa “I Want You Back.” As he took a deep breath and got into character, the year was somewhere between 1969 and 2006, and Fairfax, a rising eighth grader at Engineering Science University Magnet School (ESUMS), was feeling good.
Top: Bruce Dean Fairfax. Bottom: First-time camper Teagan Dear.
“It’s fun!” he said of the program, which has helped him build confidence both on and off stage. As a kid, Fairfax grew up listening and singing along to “old music,” which he thinks of as artists from Ella Fitzgerald, Smokey Robinson, and the Isley Brothers to Earth, Wind & Fire to Ice Cube and Eminem. “I like the opportunity it gives you to sing and dance onstage.”
Before this summer, he added, he wouldn’t have felt as comfortable stepping onto the stage, despite loving dance and singing in church as a kid. While “I’m normally a people person,” he’s become a little more shy and tentative around performance over the past few years. But when he arrived at ConnCAT this summer, teachers helped pull him out of his shell.
“I want people to know that this is special because it made me more open to people and not cooped up,” he said.
Across the room, first-time camper Teagan Dear also got into the zone, shaking off jitters before her performance as Whitney Houston. A rising eighth grader at Hamden Middle School, Dear entered the program “kind of nervous,” especially when it came to thinking about live performance. “I was like, really shy, because I’ve never sang [for an audience] before.”
But during the first week of the program, she was performing with an ensemble, and Fluker heard something in her voice that made him pause, and pull her to the side. He suggested she try out Houston’s “Greatest Love of All.”
Dear was initially hesitant, but “when I heard it [the song],” the lyrics spoke to her. She went home and practiced, and then practiced some more. Thursday’s rehearsal found her steadying her nerves in a rose pink evening gown, with sleeves that flared out and draped past her shoulders and back.
“Now, I’m not as nervous as I was,” she said, running through a list of numbers that also included interludes from the Jackson Five. “I think it gave me the confidence to take chorus next year.”
From the wide doorway, Driffin drifted into the room, taking a seat in the front row as he watched students orbit each other like excited atoms. For years, he’s helped build up the program; this summer has been the first that Graziano has run the show largely on her own. Thursday, he watched the action with a gentle, knowing smile, one hand often resting on his chin. Only when it was time for a pep talk did he step in.
“If you have a gift, use it!” he said to students. “You are great. You are beautiful. Your faces are beautiful. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!”
When students entered the program six weeks ago, he remembered, he watched some of them shrink away from performance, or say that they were too shy. So it’s been a joy to see them step forward and take that time in the spotlight.
“Don’t be too shy!” he said. “Your gift can take you to a place you never imagined … you don’t ever know who is looking for you.”
And it was true. As they took the stage, 100 years of music—plus tap dance interludes, lyrical movement, hip hop and contemporary dance—all bloomed to life, one song at a time. As young people snapped and spun to Cab Calloway’s iconic “My Gal” and dipped into Langston Hughes’ “Dreams,” it was easy to sit back and imagine the decades falling away, until these performers entered the stage as if the wings were in fact the bustling streets of Harlem.
Lifting a mic to his mouth as he sang “It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)” with his peers, Nehemiah McLaurin took it back to the age of jamming with Duke Ellington, his smile glowing as he beamed from the stage.
By the time he returned as Sam Cooke a few songs later, belting the words “I was booo-oorn by the river!” it felt like a change was indeed going to come, and he would be the one ushering it in.
But it was Watts, performing Billie Holiday’s anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” that froze the moment, and showed in real time how the summer program helps students grow into themselves and learn about Black history through the arts. As music swelled around her, Watts eased into the song, holding the weight of the words as she sang. With each line, it was as if her voice burrowed further into it, until the sorrow had a searing, knife-like edge.
Even on the cusp of performance, “I feel pretty relaxed,” she said in an interview minutes before the song, stepping out into the hallway to speak. “Music is what calms me.”
Prior to performing the song, she’d been perched on a piano bench beside Fluker, one hand close to her trumpet at all times. For four or five summers, he and the summer program have been a steady, constant and welcome presence in her life, even as she’s changed schools and started contemplating college.
As she goes into her senior year—Watts is currently homeschooled—she can’t imagine a place she’d rather be. After finishing “Strange Fruit,” she returned to her place beside Fluker.
“It’s sometimes chaotic. But once it all comes together it’s really great,” she said of the summer program. “It really feels like a family. It's like we’re at home, and I feel safe enough to express myself.”
Back inside the auditorium, self-described besties Sienna McClean and Egypt Robinson slipped into their seats at the back of the room, dancing in place to Ella Fitzgerald’s “Blue Skies” while dressed in matching sequinned leotards that shimmered in the light.
For both of them, the summer program has been a place to build community and overcome their fears of performing.
“It’s kind of scary but it isn’t scary at the same time,” said Egypt.
Picturing Black History, From Past To Present
Teacher Jasmine Powell with her students' art.
Just hours after their dress rehearsal Thursday, students stood surrounded by vibrant visual art, in the light-filled, open rooms where ConnCAT opened its new Dixwell Avenue hub earlier this month. Powell and Linehan seemed to be everywhere at once, fielding questions from curious parents and siblings and praising students for the time they spent learning the history behind a project.
On one wall, bright rows of construction paper collages told a story of the Harlem Renaissance and its echoes through time, with nods to cultural luminaries like Florence Mills, Abbey Lincoln, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, Willie Bailey, Josephine Baker and Augusta Savage. Each, explained Powell, was a figure that students researched before sitting down to make art—a chance for learning and reflection that they may not receive anywhere else.
On a table across from them, a series of framed collages pictured New York and New Haven across the last century, from jazz clubs and old-school clothing stores to high-rise buildings at nightfall, their windows ablaze. Like the portraits, which honor artists who are often not taught alongside their white counterparts (did you learn about Augusta Savage before college?), the collages were done in the manner of Romare Bearden, giving students a chance to learn about the artist and his work through hands-on practice.
“It’s always so full circle,” said Powell, an alum of ConnCAT’s youth programming who first returned to teach in 2022, of teaching in the program. Four years ago, she was still a college student at Hampton University; now, she’s finishing her graduate degree in art therapy at Albertus Magnus College. “Every time I’m creating the projects, I think about, ‘What would a younger me have wanted to do?’”
When she was putting the summer’s program together, Powell found herself asking the same questions that Graziano, Driffin, and several other arts teachers were asking each other. “Do I pull from the past,” or do something entirely new and different, she remembered thinking. Ultimately, she decided to do a mix of the two, returning to some beloved assignments from past years while also building new ones that would keep students on their toes.
In addition to collages, she worked with students to make face masks inspired by the work of artist Lois Mailou Jones, comics and pop art that recognized the contributions of Black artists like Barkley Hendricks, Derrick Adams, and Fred Ebami, and album covers paying homage to Black artists both past and present. For the first time, she also folded mobiles into the curriculum, hanging them in the building’s wide, light-flooded lobby.
As students drifted from room to room, marveling at the creations of their peers, many were eager to talk about what the summer has meant to them. Sienna, who described the program as “pretty good,” found herself learning for the first time about Zora Neale Hurston, who became one of the most powerful truth-tellers in the 20th-century United States through her written work and her interest in presenting and preserving history.
“She’s a jazz writer and poet,” she explained proudly as a few attendees stopped to admire the images.
Students Jaliyah Lowery and Sienna McClean.
Jaliyah Lowery, a rising sixth grader at Achievement First Amistad Academy Middle School who has been in the program for two years, said that she was savoring “everything” about learning through ConnCAT while she still could. In her art classes, she was hooked from the first day, as Powell started talking about the Black artists who had made history with their work, and left a legacy that students could tap into.
“I like the flow here,” she said, walking over to a mobile she’d worked on with Powell. Around her, the walls teemed with art: fluorescent-colored pop art vignettes, jazz-themed collages, portraits from the Harlem Renaissance, records heralding artists from Beyoncé to Pink Floyd.
One room over, in the building’s pristine new digital lab, Linehan spent the last 20 minutes of the exhibition opening teaching photography skills to Max Boussicot and Trenton Moore. Max, who is going into the seventh grade, remembered feeling stuck the first time he walked into Linehan’s classroom—and then realizing that Linehan wanted to meet him exactly where he was. He pulled up an image of six cars, arranged neatly across the page, that had spoken to him.
“It made me feel good!” he said. “It made me feel confident and passionate.”
Top: Brendan Linehan. Bottom: Trenton Moore with a "Funky Banana" themed album cover he made.
Linehan, who knows Driffin through his camera and recording work at Faith Healing and Deliverance Ministries, said he was excited to join the ConnCAT family for the first time, so much so that he would be staying on to teach in the fall.
That too has been a journey, he added, At first, he wasn’t sure that he wanted the job; the offer came in late June, and the program was right around the corner. Then he walked in, and something clicked.
“I came in, saw their faces, and I was like, 'Okay, I can do this,’” he remembered. “They have all the potential in the world, and they just don’t know how to focus it just yet. And listen, they blew me away.”
He pointed to the work of one student, who knew from the jump that she wanted to start a confection business, and asked if she could dedicate her time in digital art to creating a menu. Linehan was thrilled—and a little floored.
“The second you gave them something, they took it and ran,” he said. “It’s just that moment to be in a space and be creative.”
Back out in the hallway, the good vibes extended to a group of ConnCAT alumni who have become mentors in the program, some for the first time this year. Irelle Lowrey, who graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in criminal justice in May, said that “each year the kids keep bringing me back.”
While she has told Driffin and Graziano that this will be her final year before she professionally moves on, it’s not yet clear whether she believes that herself.
Alumni Nike Bonhomme, Isaac Perry, Taniya Gatison, and Irelle Lowery.
Isaac Perry, who for years was a student at ConnCAT, agreed. Around 2017, he joined the summer program for its focus on music and art, which helped him feel at home. Now a student at Southern Connecticut State University, he came back because he was interested in teaching. At SCSU, he’s pursuing music alongside engineering. He credits his studies in the former to ConnCAT.
“It’s a very interesting experience,” chimed in Nike Bonhomme, who is now a rising sophomore in high school, but for years attended the summer program as a student. “Being on the other side.”