If it’s hard to find an affordable apartment in Madison, imagine trying to find a place where you can paint an enormous canvas in oil paints, or to weld a 12-foot tall sculpture, or practice with your large drum corps. Back in 2011, the Madison Cultural Plan concluded that “Madison is a community rich with creative characteristics, energy, and activity of nearly every sort,but it is bereft of an infrastructure to sustain and grow those riches and to capture their value.”
Earlier this year, the Madison Central Creative Alliance put together a plan to try to fill that gap, with a proposal to reuse the soon to be vacated Madison College downtown campus as a multipurpose art studio, exhibition and living space. The group pulled the plug on the project once it realized it couldn’t compete with the several commercial proposals for the site. Allen Ebert is the Executive Director of the Children’s Theater of Madison, one of several groups that came together to form the Madison Central Creative Alliance. He joins 8 O’Clock Buzz host Brian Standing, by phone.