Today, South Jersey Service went to the Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown. Perkins Center for the Arts is a multi-purpose arts center within walking distance of MFS. It was founded in 1977 and was named after the Perkins family. It was originally built in 1910 as a wedding gift for Alice and Dudley Perkins and was turned into the Arts center in 1977. The Arts center hosts many events, organizations, classes, lessons, exhibits, and shows. There are after school art/music classes you can take to further your skills, you can visit one of the many art exhibits they have, you can see one of their live musical shows, and you can go there for summer camp in the summer!
In the morning, we met up in Ms. Scully’s room and took a 20-minute walk to the center. Since it was a nice day, we were able to split up and do outside cleanup. When we first arrived, we were given a tour by Kahra who works at Perkins, and then we were joined by another employee named Allison. There were four different groups working on vine cleanup, pedestal painting, foam cutting, and leaf raking. At the end of the day the entire group worked together on log rolling.
For the vine cleanup, three or four kids would pick up vines and cut off the dead ones around the perimeter of the building. There were also a couple of kids who were raking dead leaves and plants out of bushes to then put them into trash bags to be thrown away. We filled about four trash bags with leaves, sticks, vines, and plants. Inside the building, there were three kids refurnishing pedestals for an art installation by painting them white, which proved to be a messy and fun project. The last group was led by the summer camp organizer named O’Sheila. That group worked inside the dance studio where they cut up many foam mats into many sizes to be placed on the floor of the dance studio. They cut a few big mats and a few small mats as well. At the end we all rolled logs into a circular formation for an upcoming event.
There was one particular area that was especially hard to tackle. One student, Cole, went in with clippers and snipped all the trees. He then raked all the dead leaves and weeds out of the area into a pile to get rid off. He also tore off the dead branches and used a small rake to get the weeds out of the corners. Overall it took him an hour to fully clean out the area, and he really made the area look a lot better.
