Baltimore Community Fellowships
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Photo: Bruce Weller for the Open Society Foundations
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Baltimore, Maryland
2009
Melissa Ruof grew up in a small town in southern Minnesota with a rich school music program, complete with orchestras. There she learned to play the violin and viola—well enough to get into the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Ruof is spending her life as a professional musician, teaching privately and at the Levine School of Music and performing with the Washington Opera, the Washington Chamber Symphony, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra, and at Wolf Trap.
Today, at age 72, Ruof wants to share her love of the arts with hundreds of residents in the Sandtown-Winchester and Upton neighborhoods by using her fellowship to develop Jubilee Arts in a storefront building across the street from her home. Through partnerships with Maryland Institute College of Art and Baltimore Clayworks, Ruof plans to offer courses in ceramics, drawing, painting, portraiture, landscaping, making collages and creating sculpture from found objects. There will be classes in ballet, creative writing, poetry, letter writing, creating a resumé and journal writing. Beginning in January 2010, classes will be offered to kids after school and to adults during the daytime and evenings. Ruof envisions selling the artwork—cups, pots, wall hangings and paintings—of the Jubilee artists to create income for them and for the program.
Ruof sees Jubilee Arts as supporting the mission of Newborn Holistic Ministries, a nonprofit trying to enrich the struggling Sandtown-Winchester and Upton neighborhoods, which are rife with drug dealing and poverty. Ruof is dismayed at how schools today have virtually eliminated arts programs, even though arts education can boost academic performance. As a volunteer violin teacher at the Sitar Center for the Arts in Washington, DC, Ruof's first student was a seven-year-old boy whose attention span initially was less than a nano-second. But as they worked together, the boy was able to focus longer, and his mother attributed his new success in school to his violin study.
Ruof believes Jubilee Arts will give kids in her neighborhood a way to improve their school performance, offering them opportunities other than the drug trade. At the same time, she believes Jubilee will enhance the poise and confidence of adults and point them in new career directions. "Jubilee Arts will provide a place for residents to explore their creativity, learn together, dance together, work on joint projects together and have fun together in positive activities that foster community relations," she says.
