Screening of "Downside Up: How Art Can Change the Spirit of a Place" May 17, 2007

As a Preservation Month "gift to the city", CIVITAS is presenting a free screening of Downside Up at the Erie Art Museum Annex. A 30-minute public disctussion will follow the hour long film.

How does a dying class town end up betting its future on art? With 80% of its downtown buildings closed, North Adams, Massachusetts united blue-collar locals with art world luminaries to transform economic failure into America's Largest center for contemporary art, MASS MoCA. A film by North Adams native nancy Kelly, Downside UP is about the tentative, dangerous notion of hope in a city viewed as hopeless. (From the film's website http://www.downsideupthemovie.org/)