Carleton College Director of the Arts Steve Richardson will be the guest speaker at the NDDC’s March Downtown Forum. The Forum is Tuesday, March 4^th, 8 am in the Riverview Conference Room, lower level of the Archer House, 212 Division Street, in downtown Northfield. Steve will talk about his professional background, Carleton’s proposed art center, and the college’s vision of a higher education arts center that earns national recognition.

A graduate of the Carleton Class of 1986, Richardson is the Director of the Arts at the College, a newly-created position designed to provide a leadership role in the conceptualization and development of Carleton’s “Arts Union,” a multi-million dollar facility to be located at the site of the former Northfield middle/high school. The College plans to gear The Arts Union toward creative collaboration by collectively housing its academic departments of studio art, art history, cinema and media
studies, theater and dance, and English. Carleton presented its preliminary ideas to the Northfield Planning Commission in 2005 with a price tag of approximately $40 million; the project has since been divided into two phases with an estimated cost totaling over $90 million.

Carleton is working hard to reach out to the community through the arts and Steve is well qualified for pursuing this goal. Steve has been at the Theatre de la Jeune Lune for the past 17 years, including the last 12 as Producing Director, for which he won the 2005 Tony Award for outstanding regional theater.

The NDDC is a non-partisan, non-profit community organization dedicated to the vitality of downtown Northfield. The event is free and open to the public. As always, coffee and cookies will be served.