Photograph courtesy of PushPush Arts
Whoever invented the trope of the starving artist must have been in the real estate business. With rents rapidly rising across the U.S., many cities have seen an exodus of artists who can no longer afford to live and create there.
It’s a growing concern that drove local arts incubator PushPush Arts to become the creative partner of ION Arts College Park, a community for artists to find support and inspiration, all in one cohesive, public transportation–accessible location.
PushPush’s cofounder Tim Habeger points to how integrally connected Atlanta’s arts scene is to the core of what makes it cool in the first place—and how rapid gentrification diminishes the city’s appeal over time. “Every day I look and see another condo starting in the 800s, and they’re in a desert,” he says. “It’s all chain food places, there’s nothing unique or interesting about it. How is this city living?”
The 23,000-square-foot set of four buildings was once used by the 125-year-old College Park First United Methodist Church. The space was too large for the church’s modern needs, and it partnered with PushPush and others to create an arts campus. ION Arts College Park has slowly been rolling out its array of offerings over the last year, including 60 units of affordable housing with an art gallery, low-cost studio and rehearsal space to rent (including a soundproof recording studio and podcast suite), a black-box theater, and a multipurpose cafe where you can see stand-up comedy and music and enjoy local culinary treats.
The College Park complex is by far the biggest undertaking in the company’s history, but it’s not without precedent. The team at PushPush Arts (formerly PushPush Theater) has spent nearly three decades cultivating spaces where artists have the freedom to develop new, interesting work and take risks.
PushPush was founded as a workshop at 7 Stages Theatre in 1997 by Habeger and Shelby Hofer, two theater veterans who were then dating and are now married. The name came from a late-night party joke with friends, making fun of the cheesy, chest-hair-buffet cover of the Herbie Mann album Push Push.
From the outset, the company built a reputation for scrappy, sometimes weird, and always diverse offerings. Hofer and Habeger aspired to create a versatile artistic ecosystem rather than simply run a standard theater. They founded Write Club Atlanta. And their Dailies Filmmakers workshop from 20 years ago hatched more than 250 short films and 20 hybrid media productions.
Through productions, educational programs, and collaborations with other organizations, PushPush has nurtured the careers of hundreds of artists over the years—some of whom have gone on to tremendous success in New York and Los Angeles. That list includes horror director David Bruckner (The Ritual, an upcoming remake of The Blob) and Donald Glover, who gave some of his earliest performances at PushPush and was mentored by Habeger as a high school student at DeKalb School of the Arts.
The fact that Bruckner and Glover, and countless others, have moved away so that they could keep growing, Habeger says, is a prime example of Atlanta “throwing a good investment away” by not doing more to champion the arts.
This new effort is designed not only to ensure that talented emerging artists have a space to experiment and flex their creative muscles, but to foster a community that fully embraces—and maybe even hangs on to—its most valuable asset: homegrown artists.
This article appears in our August 2024 issue.
