Above: Freeman Arts offers diverse cultural programming along with providing arts outreach to more than 20,000 students each year.
By Roger Hillis
Photos courtesy Freeman Arts
The summer of 2024 finds the outdoor Freeman Arts Pavilion in Selbyville running at full throttle. As is the case each summer, tens of thousands of music fans are braving the heat to enjoy concerts by famous faces.
These types of heavy hitters who hit the stage as the sun starts to set get the lion’s share of publicity and attention for the seasonal, 4,000-capacity pavilion, which is a program of the nonprofit Joshua M. Freeman Foundation. However, CEO Patti Grimes and her team also offer family fare during the day.
“A lot of people don’t realize that 50% of our programming is free,” says Grimes.
This includes events for kids and their parents each Saturday featuring magicians, drumming, spoken-word performers and more. And while the pavilion closes shop each September, the activity moves inside as the organization visits schools. Freeman’s folks behind the scenes are already focused on these fall and winter community projects for teens and children which spotlight culture and the arts.
“Even though we’re at the height of our summer season, we’re busy scheduling our back-to-school programming,” says Grimes. “It’s a delight to be working for the community almost 365 days per year.”
Freeman has a committee that consults with elementary and high schools to determine which types of programs would most benefit their students. “We try to offer things that are tied to their core curriculum,” says Grimes.
These age-appropriate events run the gamut. Elementary school programs focus on dance; the middle school programs focus on the visual arts; and high school programs feature more music. These can be in the form of general assemblies, small classroom experiences or both.
“We’ve had a brass band that performed at a school assembly, and then met with music students in a classroom setting,” says Grimes. “It gave the students the chance to ask the musicians about everything from posture to how to hold longer breaths.”
There are also night classes that parents can attend along with their children who are students. “We’re reaching 20,000 to 30,000 students per year,” says Grimes.
The Freeman events programs also seek to bridge ethnicities and cultures. “One of the best examples of this is our opera program,” she says. “It teaches the language and etiquette of opera, and it’s bilingual in Spanish and English.”
Nine of the school districts involved are in Sussex County, but last year Freeman crossed state lines for the first time.
Freeman Arts CEO Patti Grimes says 50% of their programming is free.
“In 2023, we started working with Worcester County and Wicomoco County schools in Maryland,” says Grimes. “We get a preponderance of patrons from Delaware, but we’re so close to the state line that we also get a lot of people from Maryland. We always say you don’t need a passport to enjoy the Freeman Arts Pavilion.”
Freeman received some major props this summer when Grimes traveled to Wilmington for the annual Delaware Business Times awards ceremony — where she was named CEO Of The Year in the Large Nonprofit category.
“I was proud to accept it on behalf of the entire Freeman organization. It’s a true team effort,” she says. “And it was nice that a Sussex Countian was chosen, since there is usually a lot of focus on Kent County and New Castle County.”
