Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | Newhallville | Learning Corridor | CPEN
Top: Scott Huckaby (in orange) with Jason Welch, Jane Schwartzberg and Lynne Bey, Niquis Parker, and another participant. Bottom: Charles Kaiser and Onica Victory.
Jason Welch was ready to ride. Already, he had checked the snugness of his helmet, the placement of his seat. He placed his hands tightly around the handlebars, eager to feel the wind in his hair. He looked to his instructor for the go-ahead. As he began to pedal, a flash of pink and yellow caught his eye, and he made a note to check it out on the way back.
Across the grass, artist Charles Kaiser waited patiently to show off his work.
Community artmaking came to the Newhallville Learning Corridor Saturday, as the Community Placemaking Engagement Network (CPEN) joined Connecticut Trails Day with a neighborhood bike ride and invitation to local artists to show their work. This year, it is part of CPEN’s growing effort to utilize the space for neighborhood art markets, community gatherings, and a weekly bike clinic for youth that began last month.
“We’re trying to get different people to use this space,’” said CPEN Founder Doreen Abubukar. She noted how often Newhallville is excluded from discussions around citywide arts and culture “This whole time, my mentality has been, ‘If we build it, they will come.’ New Haven prides itself on being an arts city … let’s make art available to everyone.”
This summer, CPEN has the resources to make that happen, she added—it just needs the partnerships. In March, the organization received a $33,000 Neighborhood Economic Opportunity Challenge (NEOC) grant, funded by an infusion of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars that the city must use by 2026.
It is the first grant of its size to go to CPEN, which maintains both the Newhallville Learning Corridor and the UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery across the street.
With that money, Abubukar plans to hold more programming on the canal, from the neighborhood’s new “bike box” and repair clinic to weekly youth rides with instructor Scott Huckaby. Starting July 1, she aims to have weekly markets with New Haven artists, as well as produce stands and cultural events.
The initiative mirrors and expands the work she and CPEN board members did with Artspace two years ago, including during its Open Source Festival, before the organization lost its Orange Street home. In past years, CPEN has also collaborated with both CitySeed and the Common Ground Mobile Market.
Saturday, that vision came to life across the learning corridor, a revitalized green space once known and feared as “The Mudhole.” On a section of the Farmington Canal, Heritage Trail, Huckaby Prepared for a ride with several students he’s been mentoring for weeks. Born and raised in the city, Huckaby grew up visiting Newhallville, where his grandmother lived. Now, it’s his way of giving back to the city that raised him.
“Every time you ride this bike, we want to see your helmet on!” he called firmly to members of the group as they gathered in full sun, some young cyclists covering their eyes. Since May, he’s been meeting there weekly, leading classes and workshops on how to ride. In the back, Jane Schwartzberg and Lynne Bey, who had made the trek from Glastonbury and Vernon respectively, smiled fondly.
For 11-year-old Jason, who lives in the neighborhood, Huckaby’s lessons are thrilling. While he started riding when he was five, he hasn’t spent much time on the corridor, and did not own a bike of his own. His participation in the program changed that.
“It makes me feel good!” he said. “Air just hitting me. It’s just fun to ride.”
At a lone table nearby, Kaiser opened a binder of his drawings, and spoke to the occasional passerby about the healing value of the arts. Born and raised in Bridgeport’s Father Panik Village, he began “just scribbling a lot” when he was nine years old, and found that it calmed him. In elementary and middle school, “I just kept going and going,” he said. “As I got older, I got better.”
During a period of years spent in and out of the carceral system, drawing was a constant companion. Now, he said, that love for the craft remains with him as a resident at Leeway, Inc. As a lifelong Connecticut resident, he’d love to see more chances to exhibit his work, as well as more affordable studio spaces in the city.
On the pages before him, a woman smiled and leaned down to pet her dog, her eyes twinkling. On the next page, a Marilyn Monroe-esque figure looked out expectantly, her face outlined in electric blue as she rocked a yellow bob. Another, and a woman lifted her thin, long arms to her Afro. Everything on the page was bathed in green and electric blue.
When he sits and draws, he said, the rest of the world falls away. It’s what keeps him coming back to it.
“That’s part of the beauty of CPEN,” chimed in Onica Victory, a graduate student in social work at Howard University. After meeting Abubukar through her twin sister, Loreen Lawrence, Victory became Abubukar’s assistant. “To be able to rehabilitate individuals and the community” through the arts.
“A lot of people need the focus,” she added.
As a small fleet of cyclists moved back in, Kaiser showed off his work, turning the pages of a binder at Victory’s urging. Jason, still flushed from the ride, was too distracted to look closely: Huckaby had just informed him that the bike was now his, as long as he kept showing up to weekly meetings.
Grinning, he said he would use it to ride around the city as much as possible—especially because he doesn’t love walking.
“Remember,” Huckaby said before the knot of cyclists dispersed, addressing Jason. “If anything is wrong with it, you can come and get it repaired right here.”