Tribune Chronicle/Andy Gray SMARTS Director Becky Keck talks about what the educational program will be able to do at its new location in the Ohio One Building in downtown Youngstown. A ribbon cutting for the new location is scheduled for Thursday, June 1.

YOUNGSTOWN — In 2013, the community arts school Students Motivated by the ARTS (SMARTS) learned it was losing its home at and its funding from Youngstown State University in a budget-cutting move.

It became a standalone, non-profit organization, and Executive Director Becky Keck and its board worked to find a new home while continuing to offer arts-based educational programs designed to help students apply the discipline and focus required for the arts to all aspects of their education.

Two weeks after receiving a Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio for its work in arts education, SMARTS will cut the ribbon on that new location in the Ohio One building in downtown Youngstown.

“Whenever the first group of students comes in here after June 1, it will be amazing,” Keck said. “I’m a little fearful what my physical and emotional response to that will be.”

The new space has five standalone classrooms, and dividers can be used to create additional workspaces as needed. Keck particularly is proud of their piano lab and music rooms.

“This room will change how we teach piano and music theory in a way that I never imagined nine years ago,” Keck said. “With electric keyboards and headphones, the teacher can hear students together or separately … We’ll be able to teach eight students piano at once, and music theory is best taught on keyboard.

“We’re not trying to train a Yo-Yo Ma here, we’re trying to train children to be good citizens, have discipline and focus and to use the skills they learn through the arts to be smarter, and music theory does that. That’s where music connects to math.”

The music rooms were made possible through a $60,000 donation from Barbara Brothers, dean emeritus of YSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, in honor of her late husband, Lawrence Haims.

“He was a concert pianist and they traveled the world together,” Keck said. “It’s an absolutely amazing love story. He was ill, they knew his time was coming, and she was able to tell him they were going to do this gift in his memory before he died. That doesn’t normally happen.”

Brothers said, “We had supported SMARTS since its beginnings at YSU and believed in its mission and the ability of its director Becky Keck to carry out that mission. The values that drive SMARTS — education, the centrality of the arts to human existence, and the importance of community in supporting each of us — were central to our lives.”

There’s a Creation Zone that can accommodate more than 60 children and could be used for revenue-generating activities like birthday parties. A store will sell locally made art. There’s a library and quiet rooms where children can get a break from all of the activity that will be happening there.

Many of these spaces have names. Keck’s office is the J. Ford Crandall Leadership Office. There’s a Frank & Pearl Gelbman Smartatorium, a Hine Memorial Fund Library, a Paige and Burns Insurance Depot, The Youngstown Foundation Visitors Center and a Thomases Family Endowment Gallery.

Naming rights were sold as part of a $750,000 “All in One” campaign that so far has raised nearly $550,000. Additional naming rights still are available. And Keck stressed that the organization couldn’t have made this transition without those donors and many others, including Ohio One (which provided free office space), the Legal Creative (which did all of the paperwork necessary to become a nonprofit for free) and Jet Creative (which donated its web design and marketing services).

In addition to offering classes on site, SMARTS will continue to do outreach with area schools and afterschool programs, such as SMARTS Rhythms, a 10-week hand-drumming class it did at Willard PK-8 School in Warren.

It also played an integral role in Warren being selected by the Kennedy Center for the Arts for its Any Given Child program, uses existing arts programs in the schools and area arts organizations to integrate the arts throughout the curriculum. Warren is the only school district in the state and one of only 23 districts nationwide selected for the program,

William Mullane, who serves on the Any Given Child executive committee, said, “SMARTS was the logical entity to go to … Becky was able to communicate in a really effective way with the Kennedy Center, the city administration and the school and coordinate and get all of those entities to work together … It went a long way toward making the proposal just work.”

Barbara Shepherd, director of national partnerships for the Kennedy Center, was among those who wrote nomination letters for SMARTS to be considered for the Governor’s Award.

“The award was in arts education, not arts administration, and we’ve been a very small organization for the last 39 months. I was kind of overwhelmed with that nomination,” Keck said. “(The award) gives absolute validity to us as we head into the fall of 2017 and start to celebrate our 20th birthday. It’s a reminder to people or (an introduction) to those who didn’t know about us in the past.”

SMARTS may offer classes for adults or adult-and-child programs that will have a fee, but its emphasis will remain in accessible educational opportunities in visual arts, music, dance, theater and creative writing.

“Hopefully, we can sustain ourselves in a way that our core SMARTS programs are free and available to all kids,” Keck said.

agray@tribtoday.com