A year of change for off-campus arts scene

The greater Chapel Hill arts community experienced a year of flux in 2014.

Dirty South Comedy Theater, home of the local improv all-stars, relocated to 462 W. Franklin St. in May, moving from its original home in Carrboro. The move gave DSI about 7,200 square feet — which means more room for comedy classes.

Ashley Melzer, associate artistic director for DSI, said the new space is better.

“Our old space was a performing theater,” she said in May. “You came in and saw a show, and maybe you stayed for a couple of shows, but it didn’t feel as much like a place you could come any time you wanted and hang out.”

N.C. film incentives cut

North Carolina’s 25 percent tax rebate incentive for movies filmed in North Carolina will end this year. The program has been replaced by a $10 million incentives fund.

The cuts have disappointed students hoping to enter the film industry, who thought they’d be able to stay in the state after graduation. It’s also left people concerned about diminishing job opportunities.

Rick Eldrige, the CEO of the Charlotte-based ReelWorks Studios, which is responsible for hiring workers in productions, said he  remains optimistic about the future of film in N.C.

“It is my desire that we can continue to work and build the industry here, which has gotten very strong over the past several years, and I’d hate to see that abandoned,” he said in August.

Carrboro denied grant

Carrboro faced another obstacle in the town’s long-running plan to establish an arts and creativity district downtown.

In August, Carrboro was denied a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that would have gone toward cultivating arts-based community development.

“We’re very creative. We can figure things out,” said Carrboro Recreation and Parks Director Anita Jones-McNair at the time.

And they did. In late October at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, Creative Carrboro, the group spearheading the project, gave residents an outlet to share how they felt about the possibility of establishing an arts and creativity district.

Creative Carrboro hopes to present its findings to the Board of Aldermen early next year.

“It could, way down the road, become a special tax district, but that’s way, way off in the future,” said Art Menius, former Carrboro ArtsCenter executive director, in October.

Protests of sexist bars

In August, Chapel Hill disc jockeys Trevor Dougherty and Rob Sekay made known their objection to lower cover charges for women at bars.

“By advertising ladies night or by offering no cover to women, that tells the male audience that this is where all the women are going to be,” Sekay said in August. “And not only is that objectifying the women, but it’s also commodifying them as well.”

The duo has since organized two silent protests at Chapel Hill bar Deep End, which offered a lower cover charge for women under 21 for its weekly “Country Night.”

arts@dailytarheel.com