PRESS RELEASE – On Thursday, June 11, 2015, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Nonprofit and Community Assistance Center (NCAC) bestowed the Tamaqua Community Arts Center with their 2015 Arts & Culture Community Award for the Dear Tamaqua project. Along with the accolade of first place in this category and recognition as the top Arts & Culture Project in the seven county northeastern Pennsylvania region, Dear Tamaqua received a $500 donation from NCAC to support the project.
The NCAC Community Awards Program was established in order to acknowledge and highlight organizations that focus on enhancing the quality of life for those in the Schuylkill, Carbon, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike, and Wayne counties. According to NCAC Board Chairman Charles Barber, “The Community Awards event pays tribute to the many hardworking and dedicated nonprofit organizations and community-minded groups whose efforts seek to accomplish a common goal: improving the day to day lives of those who live here.”
The Dear Tamaqua project is a collaborative venture between the Tamaqua Safety Initiative, the Tamaqua Community Art Center, and the Dear Tamaqua Leadership Committee, with support and guidance from Touchstone Theatre, a Bethlehem-based group that has a long history of creating powerful and original community-based art. The project seeks to build towards a more complete ownership of Tamaqua’s unique identity and serve as a catalyst for positive change.
“The Tamaqua Community Arts Center is honored to receive this recognition from the NCAC for its Dear Tamaqua project. We want to thank NCAC for helping us to celebrate our town,” enthuses Kathy Odorizzi.  “We are pleased and excited that the Dear Tamaqua project has garnered such positive response and great support from the community, without which the project would not and could not happen.”
Beginning in 2014, phase one of the program encouraged all current and former residents to share personal memories, experiences, concerns, and hopes for Tamaqua in the form of letters; over 500 were received. Phase two of Dear Tamaqua will culminate on August 4, 2015, coinciding with National Night Out, with Dear Tamaqua…in a New Light. Inspired by the submissions from phase one, the Tamaqua Community Arts Center is partnering with local businesses, churches, and community groups to transform one mile of the borough’s streets into an immersive multimedia walking experience. Along the route, audiences will experience local sights, sounds, and tastes, explore the love/hate relationship Tamaqua has with itself, and be left seeing Tamaqua in a new light. Admission into the experience will be rolling, starting at 7:30pm and continuing until 8:30pm. The starting location is in front of Vonz Restaurant, located at the train station. There is no charge for the Dear Tamaqua…in a New Light experience. The Tamaqua Salvation Army will also be conducting their Kidz Karnival from 2 – 9pm that same night in the parking lot across the tracks from the train station.
For more information on the project, including how to get involved or to make a monetary or in-kind donation, please contact Leona Rega, Tamaqua Community Art Center Director, at 570-668-1192 or email: leona@tacp.info.
Dear Tamaqua is funded in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts through a partnership with Jump Street of Harrisburg, a community based arts incubator. It is also supported by Air Products, Boyer’s, LISC, The Snayberger Foundation and now the Northeastern Pennsylvania Nonprofit and Community Assistance Center.

The ‘Dear Tamaqua’ website is DearTamaqua.com.

Click HERE to view a related story in the Times News newspaper by Kathy Kunkel.