OH-0080

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Michelle Black-Smith Tompkins is interviewed about the Bridgeport Cultural Arts Center, a community learning center dedicated to offering children and adults instruction in a variety of artistic media such as painting and drawing, photography, music, dance, sculpture, writing and much more. A.B.C.D (Action for Bridgeport Community Development) spearheaded the formation of the Center and procured funding for its programs.

Ms. Black-Smith Tompkins was a young student who attended classes at the Center and enjoyed participating in several field trips offered to area museums. She reflects on the role of the Arts Center in broadening its participants' horizons by exposing them to a variety of arts media from around the world and taking them to cultural institutions outside Bridgeport.

The Arts Center served as an important vehicle for self- expression and learning in the Bridgeport community and mirrored trends in the Black Arts movement taking place on a national level.

Black-Smith Tompkins acted as scholar and curator for a Connecticut Humanities Council funded and History Center sponsored planning and implementation project and exhibition on the Bridgeport Cultural Arts Center, 2105-2018. Her interview is one of ten taken with Arts Center participants during this period.