At the Chocolate Church Arts Center, we believe that it is of the utmost importance to tend to the imagination of children. It is from their connection to their imagination where they can truly develop their sense of what is possible. As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Before I came to the Chocolate Church Arts Center, I started an experimental youth arts project called the UnNameable Children’s Project. It is work devoted to creating experiences around a wide variety of art forms where kids could choose their own paths, create from their own imaginations and access that part of themselves where dream, imagination and wonder resides. The world of the imagination and experiences of awe defy language and transgress what we think of as known and nameable. Thus the name: the UnNameable Children’s Project.

This past week at the CCAC, a dozen kids ages 8–12 took part in one of the UnNameable Children’s Projects programs, the Dream Lab. During this week, participants explored their own dreams through collage, journaling, making their own dream comic strip and discussion. We also researched dreams in visual art, theater, puppetry, movies and animation. We spent a cold and blustery day at Popham Beach, inspired by wondrous awe of that place, from the world-building works of environmental artist Andrew Goldsworthy to the dream-like processions of Italian filmmaker Frederico Fellini. The premise is that the part of our brain that dreams is also responsible for memory, fear, creativity, visioning and, most of all, imagination. Access to this faculty is empowering at a time when children are feeling anxious about the world.

Since its founding in 1977, the CCAC has been a home for the creative development of children understanding that it a gift to be shared in community. Next Thursday, April 30, at 4:30 p.m., the Bath PTO and the Chocolate Church Arts Center will be presenting our first (hopefully annual) Rising Stars Bath Kids Variety Show. It will feature short acts from kids from the Dike-Newell and Fisher-Mitchell Elementary Schools. The two emcees of this event are no other than two true celebrities of Bath, principals Jennifer Mckay and Ross Berkowitz. We invite you to pop in and encourage these emerging artists!

Then on Friday, May 1, at 7:30 p.m., Bowdoin College Theater and Dance Department is presenting “Every Brilliant Thing.” While you can see this on Broadway right now, I think this will be a more compelling production with an actor the actual age of the main character who, with the audience, is compiling a thousand reasons for why life is worth living — an act to help his mother who suffers from depression. I’m proud we will have Bowdoin students and faculty presenting their work at the CCAC. I hope our community will engage them with this special offering.

All of this work (and more to come) is devoted to the potential of the youngest generation — their creativity, resilience and feeling of aliveness in our community. It happens on special projects like the Dream Lab and most days through the Art Lab and the CCAC Music Education program. We invite you to be part of it — no matter how old you are!

Matthew Glassman is executive and artistic director of the Chocolate Church Arts Center.

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