Cannon Coffee Owner Has High Hopes for Brookline Arts Initiative

Nathan Mallory, co-owner of , is very busy this week. Among other things, he’s planning two concerts featuring local musicians and poets, the of which will take place Friday night at Club Café in the South Side.

“We’re trying to take three dimensions of performance,” said Mallory. “The folk singer-songwriter stuff, the full rock bands and the slam poetry and show what Brookline has to offer.”

Many of the performers for this show and the second, during Brookline’s on Aug. 13, are culled from Cannon’s weekly Wednesday open-mic nights. But showcasing local talent to a more city-wide audience is not an end in itself. Mallory is confident it will be the beginning of something much bigger.

The Brookline Arts Initiative (formerly known as the ) is being envisioned as a non-profit focusing on local artist promotion and outreach.

According to Mallory, the organization will ideally provide funding, training and venues for Brookline artists of all disciplines, from music and theater to writing and the visual arts. 

Friday's show is a benefit concert to raise money to file for non-profit status, which Mallory said would cost around $800-900.

“I want to take advantage of people’s ideas and motivation,” said Mallory. “We want to be able to bridge the gap between somebody having an idea, like putting on a concert or producing a play, and, through the network we create, making that actually be possible. Because right now that possibility doesn’t really exist, and that’s frustrating for a lot of creative people in this community.”

The Initiative will put much of its focus on young artists. Mallory envisions the organization providing funds for things like dance scholarships and mentoring programs to help give teens and young adults the confidence to express themselves.

“A couple weeks ago, there was a girl that came in to perform at our weekly Wednesday open-mic,” said Mallory. “She was 15 years old and had never performed in front of people at all. She was very good but didn’t have the confidence yet, and I thought about how great it would be if I could hook her up with one of our more seasoned performers, maybe for just a ten minute conversation, and that person could explain stage presence, mic work, all of those things. She could just get a little encouragement, and that could make all the difference.”

“If you go to a lot of the open-mics around the city it sometimes feels like a closed community,” he said. “If they don’t know you, you might not get to play, even if you’re good and show up early. I’m not interested in that kind of thing. We want to get people on the ground floor and help build them up.”

It will be an extension of what Cannon Coffee already does with its open mic nights. 

“The whole idea is that it will be much more feasible to do these kinds of things as an organized group than it would if it were just me with a crazy idea trying to do it through the coffee shop,” said Mallory.

“In fact we want the Arts Initiative to become completely divorced from Cannon Coffee, to have its own name recognition,” he said. “That’s how it can remain permanent. I don’t want flyers saying ‘Cannon Coffee Presents,’ I want them to say ‘Brookline Arts Initiative Presents.’”

That kind of name recognition, according to Mallory, is what allowed other non-profits to help change the image of several working-class communities in Pittsburgh.

“Eventually we want to have buzz around our organization that we can go to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and weasel our way into the Wood Street galleries and have a community gallery there,” he said. “Lawrenceville can do it, why can’t Brookline?”