What's happening at Willoughby and Baltic?

[wbaltic.livejournal.com]

I know you all must be asking yourself that question daily, so I thought I'd give you an update so you can sleep at night.

Willoughby and Baltic is moving the headquarters to Union Square and expanding. So now we'll have a public access electronics lab, metal and wood shop, forge, foundry, neon, glass facilities and a bunch of other stuff. We'll also have room for all 63+ full members and all of the people who want to learn to make cool stuff and need space to do it. Our little 400 square foot shop isn't big enough anymore.

We're moving to a 9,000 square foot space at 13 Joy Street this month. Then we'll get back to our bike path project, and some other community endeavors.

So why is this a Davis Square post? Because we still want to support the arts community in Davis, we've decided to rent out the original Willoughby and Baltic gallery space to local artists for one week at a time to keep the shows going starting June 1st. If you ever wanted to try your hand at running your own space, this is a good way to test the waters. We are renting it at cost to us, which is roughly $200 per week. We're not making a profit at this, we just want the space to go to the arts. (If you want to see the cost breakdown I can do that for you).

If you are interested, contact info@willoughbybaltic.com.

Comments

[ignignokt.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I had no idea this institution even existed.

[jodi.livejournal.com]

i am sorry to see you move but am very very happy that you will have the opportunity to expand so much and serve so many more in a space that is still nice and local.

and i am very excited to see your old space used for something so community-centered. keep us posted on who's in the shop and how the weekly-rental experiment goes!

[ron_newman]

This is very cool. Please post this to the Somerville Arts Council e-mail list as well, since most of the local artists probably are on it.

[cutieperson]

what sort of glass facilities?

[wbaltic.livejournal.com]

We are planning on both hot glass (blown, fused, slumped, etc) and cold glass (stained, mosaics). We're interviewing instructors now, so if you know of any you can recommend, please send them along.

[somervilleguy.livejournal.com]

Will this area have an industrial side to it? Will the welding and metal working side be moving from your Somerville ave location?

[somervilleguy.livejournal.com]

Sorry just read it too quickly. I guess you already answered that question.

[ron_newman]

Actually, I can't quite tell. Is all of W&B being consolidated to this new Joy Street location?

[fefie.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[wbaltic.livejournal.com]

We intend to keep the space on Somerville Ave for fabrication through at least the end of the summer/beginning of fall, but based on our growth we believe the metal and wood classes will need to be moved to Joy Street soon. The Somerville Ave space is more of a private workshop space than a class space, and our intention wasn't to make it as public as it's become, so setting up a metal and wood class space on Joy Street in addition should work better for us.

But yes, we expect a big industrial side to the facility, which is part of the reason we chose Joy Street.

[teko.livejournal.com]

Thank you for continuing to be awesome, wherever you're located.