Creating Culture
Mike Bachman divides time between local youth center & theater company
The winter wind can blow down East 10th St. like it bears a grudge, making people who have to wait at the bus stops flinch. A wind like that would once have seemed like yet another indignity in this neighborhood, like piling on. For some, undoubtedly, it still does.
But things are happening here that are good enough to help a person put the weather in perspective. The angular prow of the Boner Center [pronounced BAH-ner] jutting out over the street signals a new energy that’s reinforced by the renovation of the Jefferson Apartments. Go a block south of 10th St. and you’ll find a grid of newly paved streets and sidewalks.
The East 10th United Methodist Church has been part of this scene in one way or another since it was built almost 100 years ago in 1911. Today, many of the people who live around here know the church for its Youth and Children's Center. Every day there are 50 little ones enrolled in the daycare program; 50 more arrive once school’s over.
These programs make it possible for parents in the neighborhood to hold jobs. And that combination is part of what’s helping East 10th St. gain some traction.
Mike Bachman is director of East 10th United Methodist’s Youth and Children’s Center. He started working there during the summer of 2004. He had just graduated from Butler University — with a degree in theater.
“In my life today,” Bachman says, “I am committed to things that I never thought that I would be. But you throw yourself in there completely, because if you don’t, others will fail. People might fail around you, or you might fail.”
Bachman says this understanding of commitment was instilled in him through the theater training he received at Butler.
He is still a theater artist. Bachman is part of the collaborative performance group known as NoExit – one of the city’s most adventurous ensembles. He says it’s his grounding in theater that has enabled him to succeed in his job at East 10th.
He is a living, breathing answer to every parent who has ever wondered what their son or daughter might do with a liberal arts degree.
Read the full article here:
http://www.nuvo.net/news/article/creating-culture
