Hiram Cultural Center Arts Center at 8 Hancock

Public library services for our community. The most important program service accomplishment for this year is our work to provide public library services for the Town of Hiram. This service is provided in the Soldiers Memorial Library building, a century-old historical building owned by the Town. Although the town owns the building, we own all of the furnishings and equipment. We provide the collections of books and other materials, six computers for public use, Internet services for the public, printing and copying services, and assistance with whatever needs have brought visitors to our facilities. We maintain hired staff to have the Library open to the public for 19-hours-per-week, with some of the open hours maintained by volunteers. The staff also hosts a children's story hour, and provides a venue for groups such as the "Knotty Knitters" (a knitting club), and for other programs and events. The Library has a collection of more than 6,000 items for loan, and has a web site where the collection can browsed using the Library World on-line catalog. On any of the four days each week when we have open hours, we may host a number of patrons varying from just a few to as many as dozens each day. Records of numbers of patron visits and types of uses are maintained and reported to the Maine State Library and to the Town. The library service does not bring in revenue except for some incidental donations.

Providing programs and events for public entertainment and education. Even before the acquisition of the Arts Center building in 2012, the Friends of Soldiers Memorial Library (FoSML) had endeavored to provide public events at the Library building. We had excellent successes with some Maine author book presentations and some other library-related programs. However, space in that historic building is very limited, so the variety of possible events was also limited. After acquiring the building that became the Arts Center, we worked to make this much more spacious building into a comfortable and attractive events venue. The variety of uses of the Arts Center is described in the previous section, but our most important use is to have the building as a space for public events and educational programs. During 2012 to 2019 we had been working to expand the variety of these events, and to increase our publicity efforts to attract larger attendance. However, in the same way that the pandemic interrupted and limited many types of public events all around the world, our Arts Center also suffered from the necessity of limiting public gatherings. Now that the pandemic risks have been diminishing, we have been working again to improve the variety of events and the attendance. During 2023, in addition to using this space for community meetings, rental uses and adult education needs, our Arts Center hosted 15 public events, ranging in variety from community band concerts to author events, crafts presentations, and programs for families and children. The attendance numbers ranged from as small as a half dozen persons to as many as 70 persons packing the building, with an average of about 26 persons attending each event.. Although seeking donations is not the focus of these events, some gatherings have expressed appreciation with significant donations in support of our work and our facilities. For some events, the revenue is also augmented by donations for baked goods, snacks, and meals prepared by our volunteers. The revenue of $3,884 is from a mix of donations for having spaces for presentations and displays, donations for the baked goods and other food, and other donations in support of our efforts. The expense of $696 is for the direct costs of advertising the events and for the costs of supplies; however, the major costs are actually for maintaining the buildings, as described and accounted for in the previous program service description.

Providing the Arts Center building for many public uses. Maintaining and providing for public use a building that we own and manage in Hiram village is another important public service for our community. This building, the Arts Center at 8 Hancock Avenue, is a former church that has been renovated and improved to make a comfortable and attractive function space. The building has two floor levels: the lower floor has space for groups of up to 30 to 40 persons, while the main floor has a space that is suitable for up to 75 to 80 persons. The public library next door is also available for use for some purposes, but the size of that building limits groups to about ten persons, and the uses must avoid disrupting the public library facilities. The Arts Center is more flexible and recent uses include: (1) as a site for many adult education programs such as yoga classes, crafts instructions, and many other courses, (2) use as space for birthday parties, weddings and other family events for an inexpensive rental donation, (3) a facility that can still be used for memorial services for which we make no charges if the need involves community members, (4) with the heat pumps that have been installed and the FHA furnace, we can host meetings at any time of year, and other community organizations (some have buildings without year-round heat or cooling) often use this building for their meetings, (5) this building is also used as the regular practice facility for a local community band, and we host at least two band concerts there each year, and many other types of programs including music concerts, dramatic presentations, visiting author events, etc. Regarding the listed expense, the maintenance of the building was accomplished with the $3805 expenditure that is listed, but during 2023, we also had a project to add a third exit doorway for better safety on the main floor. That construction work added $6807 to the costs of management of the building for this year, but with most of that added cost paid by a grant. That $6807 is not considered as an expense, but is an improvement, adding to the value of the building. The revenue of $741 is from cost-defraying rental donations.

Other Program Service Accomplishments: Our facilities also serve as emergency shelters in times of need. During times of emergency or important community needs, each of the buildings that we manage have been used for temporary emergency shelter for members of our community. Some of these needs are weather-related. Both of our buildings have year-round heating systems, and we have had volunteers keep one or the other of the buildings open at times of winter cold when some households have had inadequate heat. To alert to the availability we have announcements on our road-side sign board and, sometimes, notices on our Internet web-site and/or the web-site of the Town of Hiram. Since the installation of heat pump systems in the Arts Center in 2017, we have also been able to serve as a cooling center for residents who have had the inability to maintain homes cooled enough for health and comfort. This need has become ore frequent with apparently-increasing duration of above average temperatures during our summers. Finally, we have been able to provide the Arts Center to serve as an emergency shelter for families when extended power outages or catastrophic damage to homes has made continued home occupation impractical or impossible. Since our Arts Center has has kitchen facilities, and two rest rooms, the space is useful for short term emergency shelter. We are limited in our ability to provide such assistance for a longer time because of the lack of any shower or laundry facilities, and we also do not have an emergency generator system to maintain the buildings during wide-spread power outages. (If there is short-term power outage in winter, volunteers bring portable generators to maintain the building heating to avoid freezing damages.) Although we have no plans at this time, we may seek to improve upon shower, laundry and emergency power services at some time in the future. We do not show any expenses or revenue from these emergency services because the work is done by volunteers, and expenses are included in the already-reported maintenance costs of each building.