Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.165 | feat. Ty Marshal from Center For the Arts of Homer

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Inside the Center for the Arts in Homer: New Spaces, Public Access TV, and Community Partnerships Host Noah Chrysler interviews Ty Marshall, executive director of the Center for the Arts in Homer, New York, about the nonprofit’s multidisciplinary programming, including national touring concerts, live theater, classes, workshops, and community events run seven days a week with support from 200+ volunteers. Ty shares the center’s grassroots origins in a historic former church and highlights major initiatives: a $1.17M Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant to create “Cornerstone” in a nearby former Episcopal church for lectures, youth classes, and performances; development of a recording/production suite and management of Homer Public Access to launch local TV programming; and publication of the twice-monthly Homer News. He discusses community-driven leadership, partnerships such as supporting Cortland County’s poet laureate, local economic impacts, and efforts to help revitalize the Cortland Country Music Park and its museum. 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 00:34 What the Center Offers 01:28 First Visit Highlights 02:35 Origins and Volunteers 03:48 Cornerstone Expansion Plans 05:05 Studio and Public Access TV 07:14 Homer News and Local Media 08:30 Leadership Lessons and Community Listening 09:59 Partnership Example Poet Laureate 11:37 Advice for New Nonprofits 14:35 Impact on Local Economy and Connection 17:57 How to Volunteer 18:45 Country Music Park Revival 23:15 Community Support and Closing Thanks

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And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. Ladies and general, welcome to Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler, and today I'm sitting with Ty from the Center for the Arts in Homer, New York. Welcome, Ty. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Noah? Absolutely. Can you introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Ty Marshall. I'm the executive director at the Center for the Arts and Homer. And I've been in that position for the last 10, 11 years. And I'm really honored to be serving. It's a really vibrant space. And I'm excited to share it with your listeners and viewers. Wonderful. For people who haven't been to the Center of the Arts, can you center for the arts? Can you tell us a little bit about what the Center for the Arts is? Sure. It's a multidisciplinary arts center. We have everything from national concerts that perform on our, national artists that perform on our stage, national concerts. We have live theater.

We have a whole live theater program with a full season of upcoming plays and musicals. We also offer classes, workshops, programs, and we host local private events, weddings, et cetera. And so it's multidisciplinary. There's lots of things happening. Somebody equated it to a YMCA for the arts. And so I think that's a good definition. I love that. That's awesome.

I love the YMCA and I love the arts. So I think that sounds really cool. It kind of merges. It's really, it's a community center. Yeah. And our focus is the arts, right?

Arts and culture. If somebody comes there for the first time, what might they be experiencing there? Like what kind of workshop or class or something like that? Sure. Generally, a lot of our first timers come by way of our national touring artists, right? They come down to see Graham Nash or, you know,

Dwayne Betts, who's playing this week. He's the son of Dickie Betts from the Elman Brothers. And then they're introduced to all of our other programming. Like we have Steel Magnolius coming up this week. That's opening as one of our community theater presentations. And they're well into rehearsals and ready to go. But we also have instrument lessons. We have craft riot, which is kind of a craft night once weekly.

We have gaming nights. I could go on and on. We have dinners. other shows too, trivia nights, etc. So there's lots going on. It's quite literally operating seven days a week. And our whole purpose is to serve the community. Wonderful.

You were talking about how there are a bunch of exciting things on the horizon. It seems like you guys are working hard and building things out. Can you tell us about some of the things that you're doing? Oh, sure, yeah, yeah. So the Center for the Arts was founded about 23 years ago. What happened was it was the first Baptist Church of Hope. Homer. So we're located in a former church facility. It's a historic facility on the state and national historic registers. And that church body decided they were going to move up the road and

build a new facility. And so that worried all of our neighbors in Homer, New York. They literally sat on each other's front porches and dreamed up this place, dreamed up a place where you could see concerts and take a class and practice some live theater, learn cooking. so on and so forth. And they pooled their resources. They wrote grants. They really worked on the place themselves, right? So they rolled up their sleeves and painted and fixed.

And again, they did that 23 years ago. So it was a real grassroots effort from the beginning. And I'd like to say we're still a grassroots organization. We have over 200 volunteers that help us every day. They are our staff at concerts. They are our staff at live theater shows. They help us clean our grounds. They help fix things.

It's really quite amazing. And so we received a grant from the Downtown Revitalization Initiative. That's a New York State program that helps revitalize downtowns in different towns and villages. For $1.17 million, it was a huge grant. We'll be using that money to create a new space, which we're calling Cornerstone. And that will be housed in the former Episcopal. Calvary Episcopal Church, which is literally just across the village green from us. It's about half the size of the Center for the Arts.

And so we're going to spend probably the next two or three years revitalizing that space. That'll be a place where, from hearing community feedback, historic lectures, scientific lectures, we're working with Seven Valley's Health Coalition. They'll be building out the kitchen in a classroom in the basement. And so our partners at Cortland Collective Impacts Initiative can offer classes for young people down there. We'll have performances there, of course. And so it's kind of a secondary space. It'll be its own.

It's not the Center for the Arts No. 2. I'm trying to get that message out there. But it will have its own aura and will have its own, you know, feel. And so that's a big project on the horizon. But right now, we're working on building out a recording and production suite in the Center for the Arts Facility. This will allow us to capture live bands, you know, maybe create audition tapes for young people who are going off to art school or performance school if somebody wants to do a podcast. And so we're working with Navrostabu. He is

very active in the local theater and art scene here in Syracuse. He's donated his time to build out and create architectural designs for this space. Because as you know, a studio needs sound buffers and, you know, they're built a little bit differently than a regular room. And so that's going to be our, that's our project this year that we're building out, our construction project. And we're really excited about it. We were, we were designated as the management operator for Homer Public Access. And I don't know if anybody remembers public access channels, but, you know, every cable company has to offer a channel. for the community or the government or educational.

And so we'll be handling the management of that. And Homer, New York, will have its own television station eventually once we get the studio built out. And we're encouraging people to pitch programs, you know. We're working with local churches. The school and the government, of course, our local Homer government to also air their meetings, you know, maybe some sports games from the school. We're hoping the library will jump on with some programming. And so we're building all that out right now.

So it's a big year for us. Wow. I think that's fantastic. I think that that's so cool. I don't know. I loved watching public access when I was like a kid. You know, it's like the best. It's always like, you know, some weird, quirky little.

It doesn't have to be perfect. Exactly. It can just be like you expressing yourself creatively. Right. And it's on TV. We're also going to have, you know, a complimentary website and social media for it too. Oh, cool. So the message of those who create programs,

getting out there. And so, yeah, we're very involved with media production. You know, we have a lot of similarities with you guys here. And then we also, I got to give a shout out to the Homer News. It is a 16-year-old newspaper that we took over the publishing of about three or four years ago. It's issued twice monthly. I think we print 5,000 copies, 3,500. of which go directly to all of the homes in Homer at no charge. And it's the good news of Homer

New York. We focus on what's going on in town, right? Upcoming parades or events. What's Homer recreation up to? What's the library up to? What's the school up to? And that keeps our citizens and Homer informed. And we have a really great editor, Kim Hubbard, who's also one of the founders of the Center for the Arts, who has kind of tackled that project. And he does a great job, along with our sales rep, Mike Riley, who used to work for a big newspaper, the Cortland Standard. They're both now retired, and so this is the retirement job, and they do an amazing job at the Homer News.

Wonderful. Very cool. I mean, it sounds like a wonderful organization that's providing lots of programming for the community. You're going to start doing public access, like, news broadcasting. That's amazing. TV shows. TV broadcasting.

Wonderful. Very cool. You said you've been in this position for over 10 years now. Yeah, 10 or 11 years. Wow. So what are some things that you've learned during your tenure in that position? Good question.

I really push autonomy. I want people to think creatively and on their own. I want people to bring us ideas that they want to see happen. And so, I mean, one simple example is that we don't sit around. So I have a staff of 10. All of them are amazing, right? And so it's not just me. It's the staff of people that help the center operate again, like seven days a week.

And they bring things to the table, but we also listen to the community. We want to know what they want. So there's no sense in scheduling like a photography class if nobody's expressed interest in photography. So we're not sitting there thinking up things. We're listening and we're engaging with community members and saying, what do you want to learn? What do you want to see? and bring projects to us, right?

Let's work on it together. And so I think what I've learned over 10 years is an organization like the Center for the Arts, I think best serves the community by partnering with the community. And that's what we do every day. We see ourselves as serving the community. And so I think that's an important factor for any nonprofit organization. I think that that's beautiful. I think that that is a very wise perspective to have.

Can you give me an example of a time when you guys partnered with like a local community organization? It happens all the time. So most of what you see in the lines of community programming is generally coming from the community or something that we've noticed as an interest in the community. Cortland County is the smallest county, and I think possibly the only county in New York State that recently named a Poet Laureate. His name is Phil Asaph. And so the county itself established this role.

And the center kind of stepped up and said, what can we do to help, right? How can we help forward literacy and literature in our community? And so we've partnered with Phil, the poet laureate, and we recently had his inaugural performance. We're acting as a fiscal sponsor to help build up some funding for that program. He works with other organizations too. But the community kind of said, we're going on this. direction. We want a poet laureate. We want to focus on literacy. And so the Center for the Arts is creating programs alongside Phil and others to expand on literacy. That's one example of many. And so, yeah,

we pride ourselves in our service. It's a servant leadership type of role, right? I have a strong belief that nonprofits are established, and the reason we're tax-free is because we're supposed to be giving back to the community. And so any chance we get to do that, we're working on it and trying to forge those relationships and create those programs. And I think that's really the heart of our success. That's wonderful. I mean, I have a bunch of questions about that. So, I mean, recently I am working with my co-founder, Johnny, to start a nonprofit of our own.

And so, you know, we're in there trying to, we were recently setting up an account and stuff. And I'm like, oh, gosh, I'm going to have to pay taxes on all of this stuff because we don't have the things set up properly yet. But I don't know, do you have any advice for, you know, somebody who is just starting a nonprofit, right? And like you were talking about grants and things, right? That is something that I've been learning more about. And I don't know, what do you have to say to somebody who's starting a nonprofit? Good question. We often do advise or consult with other nonprofits.

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That's M-O-O-O-D dot com to get started. Partnerships with them too. Some of them are like the Dryden Center for Community, which recently purchased a church building and is starting a community center in Dryden, New York, which is about 15 minutes from us. We work with Cortland Collective Impacts Initiative that works, with everything from the arts to gardening to cooking, there's so many classes and programs they offer in our community. And I could go on and on.

But I think if you're starting a nonprofit, you really want to be doing it for the right reasons. And again, those reasons are to serve your community in a variety of ways, right? And so, yes, there's lots of paperwork involved. There's lots of grant writing involved, which is never easy. and it's very competitive. But I think if you listen to the community

and they're telling you what they want and what they will benefit from in a program or from your nonprofit, then all that becomes a lot easier, not so tedious, right? So I like to see nonprofits in the community and our upstate New York communities doing things that are serving the community directly. For sure.

And serving maybe an absence in the community, right? And so whether it's the arts or food or health, If they're serving that absence, then I think it's for the good and it's worthwhile. Wonderful. It's not, nonprofits are not a place where you're going to go to get rich or, you know, that it's not a corporate mindset. It's, you know, how can we work with our community on this thing, right? How can we make our community a better place to live? We do that through the arts.

The arts is our vehicle. But in the nonprofit world, there's so many different vehicles to do that. Yeah. And so I say if you believe in it, hack at it, keep going at it, talk to as many people as you can partner with people. And I think the nonprofit community will surround you and help you out, you know. And so, yeah, that's a good question. You know, I could give that more thought too. There's so many different dimensions to the nonprofit world.

But I think if we nonprofits group together, join together, work together, it absolutely makes our communities about. better place. For sure. Have you seen the effect of the Center for the Arts? Have you seen the effects on the community? What are some ways that you've seen the community change? There's so many ways. One, I see it as an economic development exercise. So people are coming to town to see a show. And we encourage them to eat dinner at our local restaurants, stop into our local stores, you know, spend some money locally. And then we try to keep those dollars local. right so when you go to walmart or any of those big chain box stores 80% of what you spend is going out of your town right and so i encourage people to shop locally eat locally play locally um and that 80

percent stays in the town because i can tell you our local businesses are spending their money locally too and we we work with local contractors local vendors um all year through and so there's the economic development portion of all this too uh we we work with local contractors local vendors um all year through and so there's the economic development portion of all this too, which is trying to spur interest in upstate New York, the central New York region, the Finger Lakes, and getting people to travel a little bit and explore these awesome, really towns and villages that are like a half hour from where you live. And so there's that whole economic development portion kind of connects to this too. We're in the arts and performance, so it's a little easier for us, right, to encourage people to come

and take a visit. And to eat at our local restaurants. You know, like for the last 10 years, a very popular thing, if there's any concert goers out there who come regularly, they know it's like Dashers in a show. Dashers is our local pub. And so they'll come down a little early. They'll have a burger or something from Dashers,

and then they come on over to the show. And they have a really great date night, a really great night out. We have a second restaurant that opened in Homer called The Exchange. And so Dashers is usually pretty, So it's now becoming like the exchange in a show too. I love it. But I love to see our local businesses thriving, you know, because people are visiting. So it's, it's, there's some tourism mixed in there too, right?

Cool. Come explore. Yeah, no, I think that that's incredible, you know, I bet that it's doing wonders for the area and I bet those restaurant owners are, you know, super happy with you. Local business owners, yeah. Love it. But there's also, you know, in our volunteer base, I mean, we can't, you know, we can't exist without our volunteers. And so, and we don't want to. It was a volunteer organization

from its beginning, from those founders sitting on their porch saying, let's roll up our sleeves and paint this room, right? That still happens, but we get a lot of folks whose partner has died, right? And they're out there alone in the world now, and they're like, what do I do and where do I go? We get people who want to meet other people. All volunteers have a different reason for wanting to volunteer. But just those interpersonal connections with one another, I got to meet a new person. I have a new friend group, I think does wonders for people. We need interaction as humans.

And an art center is a perfect place to engage in those interactions. And so a lot of our volunteers are friends. They do things outside of the Center for the Arts together. And they met at the Center for the Arts. And I think that's really special. Yeah. No, that's incredible. If people want to volunteer, if they are maybe around the area, how can they get involved? Our website, center the number four, art.org. There's a volunteer sign up on there.

Before all of our events come, a week or two, I think, we send out an email and say, hey, we're looking for bar staff, kitchen staff, ushers. We have a cleanup coming in May. We're looking for a, you know, if you want to come help us rake and shovel and put some mulch out. So we have an ongoing call for volunteers in that pool. school. And you sign up and you show up and we usually have a good time. Wonderful. We always have a good time. It sounds like it. I mean, I don't know. You guys are growing. You're expanding. There's

constantly like big acts coming and lots of community classes. I think that's wonderful. You also mentioned quick at the end here. You mentioned that you are doing your, you just started another project with a campground as well. Yeah. So we folks from the Center for the Arts, like I said, we have a staff of 10. We have a board of 13 people because it's non-frey. nonprofit. All of them, community members living in Homer, Cortland County. My board president, Pat Fitzgerald, has a band called the Elderly Brothers. It's very popular band. If you haven't checked them out, they play all oldies. It's really great. They played at this place called the Cortland Country Music Park. And I had driven by it a ton of times in my time in Homer.

It's literally about five minutes over the hill from the Center for the Arts. And he said, Ty, have you ever been to the Cortland Country Music Park? I said, no, can't say I have, Pat. I always thought it was like a country-themed campground, so I would have no interest in driving in, right? Well, I went down there for a tour and discovered that this is also a not-for-profit organization. It had fallen on some hard times. It was very close to closing. But it's a 107 site campground. It has an Opry Barn, which is like an events hall or a performance space with this big, beautiful dance floor, a stage, lighting. Bar and Concessions has an outdoor amphitheater with, that can probably hold 1,500 to 2,000 people. A big, beautiful grand outdoor, you know, stage. It's also the home to

the New York State Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. So I thought this was really interesting. Their mission focuses on like preserving and presenting country and good music. And it's that one line, music that, you know, kind of allows us to expand on different genres, right? So suffice to say we were elected to the board. I'm proudly the president of the statewide country music association was never on my life's bingo card. But we've actively been volunteering down there. And so you could say that's some of our volunteer job. My right-hand man, Sheila Ryan, she's our events director and sponsorship coordinator at the Center for the Arts. She has been very, booking private events down there. We've been revitalizing the space, different fixes, and just

giving it a lift, right? Booking in local and regional acts. And so we're hoping that it complements the Center for the Air Arts. We're seeing a lot of audience crossover between the two places. And so this is our, I'd say it's about one year anniversary since we have all joined the board and have been giving it a go. We didn't want to see this venue close, right? You'd never want to see in other arts or music or cultural venue close. And so we do everything we can to try to like offer support. And so this has been a big lift. It's a really cool place. It's quirky. It's unusual. It's unique to Central New York. I had no idea that there was like a New York State Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. We have Kenny Rogers white suit. We have Tammy Wynette's

$10,000 sequence dress. We have Johnny Cash's autograph. We have a plethora of instruments. There's over 2,000 items in the collection in that museum. And it's literally one mile off of 81. And so the Center for the Arts folks and the organization itself is kind of partnering with the country music park

to give that a lift. We're looking at the whole venture between the Center for the Arts, the Cornerstone, which is the former Episcopal Church. and the Cortland Country Music Park. In an effort to try to make Cortland County, Homer, New York, and Cortland, a music and Art Central for Central New York, we're literally, like I said, a half hour to an hour away from all the major cities, Ithaca, Syracuse, Binghamton, Auburn, Utica,

and we're already getting people visiting from those places. And so this is an expansion of that. And we don't just do country music, and so I implore people to come check it out. summer there's a bunch of events that's Cortland country music park.org if people want to check that out as another venue well wonderful I think that that is incredible tie I mean like you know I can't imagine if I was living in Homer I couldn't imagine like how excited I would be to have all these things coming our the residents of Homer have been exceedingly supportive of what we do and they do it with us right and that's really how we sustain ourselves it

It's community dollars. And so every time we make a purchase, I try to remind myself and our staff, our amazing staff, that we're spending the community's money to make this happen. Let's make sure we do it right. Yeah. Right. And so there's a lot of weight there. I don't care if somebody's donating $5,000 or $5,000 or more. We always kind of circle our minds around the fact that this was somebody's hard earned money that they gave to us to put to good use.

And so we're always focusing on that and trying to be resourceful. And again, a lot of the times we fix it ourselves, we painted ourselves, we cleaned it ourselves, still very much a DIY movement. Do it yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that that's amazing. Like, I think that it's clear that you take that responsibility seriously and it's something that's important to you. So I don't know. Thank you so much for taking the time, Ty.

I really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm really honored to be here. Absolutely. You guys are doing awesome work. Hey, thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for watching. Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler, and we will see you next time. Also, thank you so much to our sponsor, Ads on the Go. Get AdsOn The Go.com. Go check them out. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye-bye.