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FOR IMMEDIATE CIRCULATION
Contact: Lex Leifheit, Press & Marketing Coordinator
(860) 685-2806  • lleifheit@wesleyan.edu
Photo available upon request

JANIS ASTOR DEL VALLE  NAMED DIRECTOR OF GREEN STREET ARTS CENTER

Middletown, CT, June 6, 2006—Janis Astor del Valle, interim director of the Green Street Arts Center, has been promoted to the position of director, effective immediately. Her new role was announced by Pamela Tatge, director of Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, as a decision made jointly with the leadership of the North End Action Team.

“During Janis’ three months at Green Street, her leadership and collaborative spirit have helped us thrive during a challenging time," Tatge said. "Her varied arts background and expertise will enable her to create a vibrant program of classes and workshops for adults and children. Her community–building skills will enable us to strengthen the partnerships with artists and organizations that helped to open the Center last year. Janis has been warmly embraced by the teaching artists and students as someone who can help them make the center their own.”

An award-winning writer, filmmaker and teaching artist, Janis Astor del Valle joined the Green Street Arts Center’s staff as its assistant director in February, and assumed the role of interim director following the resignation of Ricardo Morris in mid-March. Del Valle has worked as a youth development specialist for A.C.T.I.O.N (Activists Coming to Inform Our Neighborhood) at The Point, a community cultural center in the South Bronx. At The Point, she developed a variety of arts and media-based initiatives designed to promote social change, including a full-length play and two short films that featured A.C.T.I.O.N members. She also spent four years working for New York University’s Creative Arts Team (CAT), an educational theater that specializes in conflict resolution through drama and embraces the basic tenets of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Del Valle holds an MFA in film from Columbia University, and a BA in theater from Marymount Manhattan College. She most recently worked as the grants manager for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Grants and Services Division in New York City.

About the Green Street Arts Center
The Green Street Arts Center offers a dynamic array of workshops, events and classes where people of any age and arts background are welcome. The three-story brick building, opened in January 2005, features performance, dance and recording studios, computer and videography labs and visual arts workshops.

The GSAC is a project of Wesleyan University, formed in collaboration with the City of Middletown and the North End Action Team (NEAT) to create an anchor for the revitalization efforts currently underway in the North End. Programming includes an after school program, classes in music, dance, theater, visual arts, sound recording, videography and creative writing, as well as evening performances, exhibitions and free family workshops.

To receive a catalog or find out more about the GSAC, call 860-685-7871 or visit www.greenstreetartscenter.org.

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