The Attic Stores New Creative Space

This year marks the launch of a new arts-themed social house on campus. Located in Prescott House on Ridgeline Road, the Attic was founded by Hannah Giese ’16, Emma Gee ’16 and Jackie Wyard-Yates ’16.5, and currently houses thirty students.

Last year, Giese, Gee and Wyard-Yates heard that there was a social house available for the first time in fourteen years due to the shutdown of Prescott as a freshman housing option after only one year. The three hatched the idea of a living space where students could pursue their artistic and musical endeavors. Thus, the Attic, based on the musical term “chromatic,” was born.

“The Attic provides a creative and low-key, relaxed atmosphere where people can decompress and do the things that they love,” Gee said. “And they don’t have to be graded for it. It’s a good break from work and a good expression of self that can help make life a lot easier.”

In addition, the leaders hope that parties hosted by the arts house will give students more social options, so as to alleviate problems with overcrowding at other parties on campus.

Members of the Attic represent virtually every arts arena on campus. Between the fall and spring semesters, the house will be inhabited by students from all seven acapella groups, College Choir, Orchestra, jazz band, RIDDIM, the Dance Department, the Studio Art Department, the Theatre Department, the Middlebury Campus staff, WRMC and comedy improv troupes. Among the diverse groups of residents are also individual writers, pottery-makers and the head of Crossroads Café, falling under the category of culinary arts.

Due to social house technicalities, only two sophomores are able to live in Prescott this year. The majority of members are juniors and junior Febs, with a fairly even ratio of boys to girls.

“People here didn’t know each other coming in,” Gee said. “That won’t be the case anymore after we’ve been living together for a whole year, but I think it created a very interesting starting point for us.”

“I think it says a lot about the membership where these people were so open to living with people they didn’t know. Reliving the freshman double experience,” Giese said.

To kick off the beginning of the school year, house members enjoyed a classy plus-one dinner with homemade spaghetti, salad and brownies, and later listened to jazz music in the spacious living room.

“We managed to feed sixty people for under a hundred dollars,” Giese said.

Since then, other art-based groups with membership in Prescott have rented out space inside the house for various activities.

“As a result, we’ve hosted more organizations, or will be hosting, than we’ve had events ourselves,” Wyard-Yates said.

However, this is soon to change.

As with the implementation of any new social house, there have been a number of bureaucratic constraints. To set their ideas into motion, Giese, Gee and Wyard-Yates had to meet with the Constitution Committee, the Interhouse Council Committee and their cluster manager, who oversees activities in various social houses, on numerous occasions.

“We’re still very much in the ideas phase,” Gee said. “But we’re in the process of implementing a lot of things.”

Once the leaders obtain a budget in the coming weeks, they plan to organize a wide range of arts-oriented activities open to anyone on campus. Ideas for future events include open mic nights, art galleries, student concerts, collaboration with the Mill, in-house talent shows, theater productions, performances by visiting artists and bands and much more. Above all, the leaders of the Attic aspire to create a highly inclusive environment that reaches out to the entire College community.

“Not only do we want to promote the people in the house to be active in whatever arts they like to pursue, but we also want to open up to the campus,” Wyard-Yates said. “For example, in the student art gallery in the basement, we would have submissions from people not only from the art department, but from anyone who likes to do art.”

Furthermore, the leaders hope to utilize space in the house for arts-related pursuits. They plan to hang up artwork on picture rails to decorate the plain white walls, and arrangements are being made to place a piano in the living room. In addition, there is a mess room in the basement where members can do anything from practice music to splatter paint on the walls as they make art. The goal is to create an environment that inspires house members to engage in creative endeavors.

“I intend to pursue art and writing more now that I have the space to do it,” Wyard-Yates said.

As the year progresses, the main goal for the house leaders is to spread the word about the inclusive, arts-oriented environment that the Attic fosters. The leaders are looking forward to recruitment week, which takes place the week of Oct. 20. They plan to host some low-key open events geared to allow underclassmen to hang out with house members and become acquainted with the social house system.

“The next key to our success is to have people know who we are,” Gee said.