The City of Kingston celebrated the fifth anniversary of the revamped Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning on Thursday night.
A special event took place to recognize and thank the many people who have contributed to the centre’s success in recent years. The King Street facility reopened on Jan. 31, 2015 after extensive renovations and is the home of the Limestone City’s arts hub.
“It’s been five years since it was reopened and refreshed and redesigned for the public to use,” says Nadine Baker, the centre’s manager. “We animate the building with our own programming — our organization, the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning — and then our tenants, they all have their own amazing program as well.”
The centre hosts classes, workshops, exhibitions and open house events for the general public. Tenants in the building include the Kingston Handloom Weavers and Spinners, the Kingston Potters’ Guild as well as the Kingston Lapidary and Mineral Club, among others.
“When you can come into a nice, well-organized situation with good equipment, your quality of work just goes so much higher,” says Les Moss, former president and longtime member of the Kingston Lapidary and Mineral Club. The club meets once a month at the Tett Centre and offers silversmithing and stone-engraving classes.
“What more could you ask for? You have the beautiful, clean environment, good equipment, where before it was — you had old equipment and you’d struggle with it and you do the best you can with what you have,” Moss said.
Kingston artist Michelle Reid is another tenant who’s occupied studio space at the centre since April.
“The visitors that we do get through here, they come in and engage, and we do have a good chat,” Reid said. “They’re always stunned that we have such a facility.”
Reid says the revitalized Tett Centre, even five years in, continues to inspire.
“When you walk in these doors, it’s like compartmentalizing the creativity, and when I walk past the potters, the lapidary club and the weavers on the way down here to the artist studios, it’s just a little fuel for my creative fire to see that people are already busy doing things,” she said.
The Tett Centre is a 19th-century distillery building owned by the City of Kingston. The facility is managed by a not-for-profit, community-led board that is responsible for its day-to-day operations.