Columbia’s Nickelodeon Theatre recently received the prestigious “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts on behalf of the Indie Grits Film Festival that the theater hosts each spring. Executive Director of the Nickelodeon and co-director of Indie Grits Andy Smith and co-director of the festival Seth Gadsden are thrilled with the growth of their program.
“What I really love about that grant,” Smith said, “is that it’s really an acknowledgment and support of what Indie Grits is trying to do for the community as a whole and our focus on helping foster the redevelopment of downtown and turning Main Street in particular, but also Columbia in general into a more vibrant, more creative place to live and to work.”
The grant is mainly focused on community building through art. Fortunately, Smith has ideas for projects to be implemented in downtown Columbia for next year’s festival.
“A lot of the money will go to public art,” Smith said. “It’s going to be a wide range. From murals, to art that hangs on the wall, to installations.”
The festival itself exposes the creative culture that Columbia has. However, that culture is hidden below the surface, making the job of Gadsden an exciting challenge.
“It’s really easy to do if you went to New York, San Francisco and Chicago where there is a really progressive culture,” Gadsden said. “All this stuff is happening and there are nonprofits and organizations that exist solely in those cross-sections. Our challenge is to find it within the Southeast because it is happening here as well but there is no light shining on it.”
A big source of this creative culture lies within USC’s student body. With the campus and students engaging more with their Main Street neighbors, the guys at the Nickelodeon hope to “close the gap and bring USC to Columbia.”
“It’s always been a strong goal and it’s my job to expand on that,” said Gadsden. “It’s really disappointing for me when we get submissions and I only see that 10 or 15 are from the University. It’s a great relationship, but as with everything it could always be a lot stronger.”
If there were two people ready to incorporate such a relationship, it appears that Smith and Gadsden are well-suited for that task. Walking down the Main Street sidewalk, the two men recognize and salute many of their passing neighbors, be they residents, business vendors, artisans or owners. They downplay the notion that they are the leaders. Instead they see themselves as members of a team of organizations committed to overseeing the growth of the Main Street area.
“I think we are members of a large group of people who have been working on this for years and years,” Smith said. “I’m proud that the Nickelodeon has become one of the anchors but the Museum has been here 10 years now; the folks at city center partnership, it’s their job.”
Their emphasis on community reveals the reason these guys received the “Our Town” grant in the first place.
“Just today Andy had an idea for us to start a newsletter,” Gadsden said. “We collect articles about filmmakers and we also collect Kickstarters and Indiegogos and we put it in the newsletter. I’ve got emails back from several saying ‘we just finished our fundraiser keep up the good work.’ It builds community and we want to help facilitate them for the rest of their careers.”
Smith and Gadsden’s work and focus are all about facilitation. They, through their growing festival, wish to esteem the city of Columbia for everyone, especially for the college students in the Nickelodeon’s backyard.
“I’ve always seen Indie Grits as being part of an incentive for creative students at USC to not feel like they have to leave Columbia once they graduate,” Smith said. “It’s a little bit of a glimpse of what your life could look like here once you leave college. That there are interesting people who live and work here and have careers and raise families.”
More Like This
Indie Grits Festival kick-off block party
By Jenna Schiferl | April 20, 2017