Allan Appel
This bright ceiling mural with cosmic and zodiacal designs was done over the years by a single artist during his visits to Fellowship Place It will be preserved and reinstalled when the mental health facility completes a long-overdue rehab of its Elm Street clubhouse.
The work includes replacing a badly leaking roof along with heating, lighting, and other basic systems. Those jobs along with a full makeover of the interior of the main clubhouse begins in June thanks to $1 million awarded the project last month by the State Bond Commission at its Feb. 24 meeting.
There will be no significant exterior changes, nor will the footprint change on the clubhouse. The clubhouse, which is the building that faces out into the community on Elm just west of Dwight, anchors a campus of six other structures including three apartment buildings housing 26 people.
Fellowship Place provides in-the-community services a year to about 600 people whose often chronic mental illness is serious enough to have led to hospitalization.
The arts program, which is run by Doran Ward, (the art therapist pointing to the ceiling in the above photo), functions in tandem with a three-meals a day kitchen, housing assistance, and lots of career and job counseling, internships, and employment placement.
“The art is only a small part. A big part of what we do is help people find jobs,” Guerrera (pictured) added.
That’s going to include at least five jobs for Fellowship Place’s clients at the new Stop & Shop on Whalley. Guerrera secured that promise from the store’s manger when she announced the good news of Fellowship’s funding at the recent meeting of the Dwight/West River Community Management Team meeting.
Guerrera said the organization places about 50 to 60 people in jobs every year. A quick tour of the campus found the McDowell Building abuzz with 10 people at computers developing resumes and cruising the internet for possible jobs.
(For confidentiality reasons, Guerrera did not permit any of Fellowship’s clients to be photographed.)
The McDowell Building, named after Fellowship Place founder (and Arthur Murray’s daughter) Phyllis McDowell, was also funded through state bonding money, in 2008. It’s used for computer classes, cooking classes, as well as movies and other get-togethers.
On a visit Friday afternoon the clubouse was thronged with upwards of two dozen people at conversation with one another, or playing the piano, or leaning and relaxing against a covered pool table.
The funding survived then-Gov. Rell’s de-authorization attempts in 2009 and 2010. The project finally made it onto the agenda and was approved thanks to the work of the city’s delegation in Hartford, according to Fellowship Place Executive Director Mary Guerrera.
Guerrera said Fellowship Place moved into the Elm Street headquarters in 1985 directly from the founding locale, the basement of the then Jewish Community Center on Chapel Street. It was there that Phyllis McDowell, the daughter of Arthur Murray of dance instruction fame, had set up the area’s first program to provide post-hospitalization social activities.
The arts remain a big arrow in Fellowship Place’s mental health quiver. There is still social dancing every Monday night.
“Stigma Buster” high above Fellowship Place Clubhouse
Emblematic of the arts’ role in recovery is this large puppet, called Stigma Buster. It soars high above the clubhouse activities below, a bit like a figurehead sculpture on the prow of a ship.
It and several others like him appeared in a play put on by Fellowship Place clients on the Green, part of the 2007 edition of the Festival of Arts & Ideas.
As part of the planned renovation, the clubhouse will also be connected to the Hald Building immediately behind it. It’s used for one-on-one or small group counseling sessions but has no bathrooms. Currently you have to exit one to reach the other.
Even though the renovation won’t add more capacity to Fellowship Place, it is long overdue, said Guerrera. The clubhouse was a former food coop, with a corrugated steel roof and minimal amenities. No spare funds have been available during the past 25 years for upkeep, and there is much deferred maintenance.
“Having nice surroundings helps people feel better about themselves. Feeling better about themselves helps people work on their challenges,” she said.
While she looked at the packed boxes of the trophies Fellowship Place’s team has won as part of a statewide softball league for people with mental illness, Guerrera said the organization plans to vacate the building the first of June.
She’s in negotiations to take temporary quarters not more than five or ten minutes away during the duration of the renovation. A ribbon-cutting for reopening is anticipated in early 2012.
Speaking of the pile of at least six boxes of soft ball trophies to be moved, she added, “We have a very good team.”