Our home at 561 Congress has been designed especially to support our main mission: to educate and support documentary storytelling. Now in the heart of Portland's Arts District, we open our new doors to our hearty group of Salt faithfuls and invite the rest of the arts community to come join in the fun. With the help of architects and designers at SMRT and the contractors at Zachau Construction, our first floor, 7,000+ square foot space was gutted, redesigned, and then rebuilt with all our unique needs in mind. Green materials, handicap accessibility, distinctly unique details, and fabulously arranged space for the public as well as our students were of the utmost importance.
Each colorful classroom is equipped with a built-in rail desk, conversation table for group critique, dry erase board, projection screen, student storage, and a plethora of outlets for all of their technological needs. Speaking of technology, all of our students will have access to the latest in iMac technology and software. Our photography students will each be assigned their own 24-inch iMac computer for the semester, and become familiar with Adobe CS3 Photoshop and Aperture 2. Radio and writing students will both use Sony PCM-D50 Flash Recorders for all of their interview needs and will be downloading audio onto their 20-inch iMacs. Radio students will spend the semester learning the nuances of Protools software, the industry standard in supreme audio editing. Could it get any better? Yep, it could. In addition, a dedicated sound booth has been built for the needs of our radio heads. We can't wait to hear the audio.
While students are enjoying 24-hour access to their new home (and aren't slaving away on their projects!), they'll enjoy curling up with a good book in the reading room, discussing issues of the day or sharing a paper in the meeting of the minds room, or making for lunch in the kitchen. And for you bikers out there, we've also included a shower for our 2-wheeled commuters. yowza.
We are also pleased to introduce you to our new Mildred H. McEvoy Archive, generously funded by the Mildred H. McEvoy Foundation. Full of hundreds of thousands of negatives, countless hours of interviews, as well as the final products over 700 students' hard work, this archive holds dearly the stories of countless Mainers over the last 35 years. We are honored to continue to preserve these stories and will do so for many years to come with the kind support of her foundation. We will be working feverishly to digitize the wonderful work of our Salt documentarians over the years in order to make it more accessible to the public.
For our students and community alike, the street frontage of the new us houses both a spacious gallery and cozy 50-person auditorium. We hope these new event and exhibit spaces do well to showcase the best of what our students do with images, sound, and the written word. Our hope is to use the comfortable and conversational public space to bridge the gap between all of our new-fangled technology and the very real and honest nature of Salt work. In the months to come, we also look forward to sharing this Congress Street space with more of you through ongoing events, exhibits, group discussions, guest lectures, book and movie clubs, film screenings, and media extravaganzas. We can't wait. LEARN MORE >
