LITTLE ROCK — What started as a 2-yearold’s desire to take dance lessons like her big sister has gone from tiny classes taught at East End Elementary School to a program with its own brand-new building.
The I Can! Arts and Resource Center is the result of Julie Mayberry fulfilling the wish of her daughter Katie, who has spina bifida and is in a wheelchair.
Mayberry put off her daughter’s question by telling her she could take classes when she turned 3, thinking Katie would forget about it. When Katie didn’t forget, she knew she had to do something.
Mayberry says she told Katie (who is now 10), “Well, Katie, I know you can move your arms like anybody else and you can spin, so let’s just start this class.” The class began with Katie and a young boy in a wheelchair. Mayberry, who taught dance in college to earn extra money, is the program’s dance teacher. “My first thought was this was a class for wheelchairs,” she says.
However, the next dancer to join the class was a girl with Down’s syndrome, Shawn Moorehart. Katie and Shawn decided they wanted to compete in a dance competition in Florida. They performed a duo and received a standing ovation.
“I just knew that there was something magical here,” Mayberry says.
The class slowly gained more students with various types of disabilities.
“I don’t know anything about these disabilities,” Mayberry says. “I just saw they wanted to learn — they wanted to dance.”
“It has been a journey of just learning how to make the class work.” She realized that she needed help and recruited her oldest daughter Ellie (now 12) and Ellie’s friends to be dancing buddies. They help the students by moving arms, moving wheelchairs or just by helping focus a student’s attention on the class.
That one class in 2006 has grown to six classes: three taught by Mayberry (until recently at the East End Elementary School), and classes taught by others in Conway, North Little Rock and Hot Springs. The dance program became a part of the nonprofit Community Connections. That program has art, theater and a sports program — all taking place in borrowed spaces. The new building, which had its grand opening July 6, gives all of the programs a place to call their own.
Funded by a grant with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, the building is also the result of help from Saline County Judge Lanny Fite and the county’s justices of the peace.
“However, we raised a lot of money from individuals, businesses, churches, and other organizations too. It is very much a cooperative effort from lots of people,” Mayberry says.
The center in the East End community of Saline County has a studio space, a lobby, office space and two large handicapped-accessible bathrooms. There are plans to grow, with phase two already in the works.
During a tour of the building, Mayberry points out what volunteers have been working on and describes future plans. A space that leads to doors at the back of the building will be a play area for the kids, and eventually will be a hallway leading to a dance and theater room. A door on the other side of the building also leads out to the back, where plans for a deck are being drawn up. Home Depot has granted the nonprofit $3,000 for supplies.
She points out where a future playground will be. “One of the dads works for Crafton Tull and is a landscape architect,” she says. She pulls out a rough draft of the plan and says, “We want to have a playground down over here that is fully accessible. If you are in a wheelchair, getting from here to there requires a major ramping system. So we would send you out this way through a tree house that has multiple stations, as you go down the ramping you go through another part of the village, it is a tree village and down among the trees and eventually landing in a play area for all the kids.”
Behind the play area on the 2-acre property is space for soccer and football fields.
Volunteers have been working on the front of the building as well. Recently planted grass is green, sidewalks have been installed and a lot of work has gone into landscaping, including trees planted in honor of loved ones and a memorial garden.
Mayberry says at first she thought it was her calling to make this all happen by herself and was depressed when things weren’t working out. The name from the program comes from Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”
“I thought God would provide me the strength to do it all,” she says.
She explains that it was hard to ask for help because she knows how busy everyone is. However, she says, “God told me, and made it very clear, ‘No, you ask people for help.’ Ever since then, things just started changing and blossoming and people were asking to help.”
“It has been an amazing journey of faith,” she adds.
The I Can! Arts and Resource Center officially opened July 6 with a Birthday Bash celebrating the completion of phase one of the center. Registration for art, music and dance classes has started and will continue until classes are full. More information may be found at communityconnectionsar.org.
High Profile, Pages 33 on 07/22/2012