Supervisors honor Bucks County Performing Arts Center and founder Mary Borkovitz on group’s 35th anniversary

LlWER MAKEFIELD - The Bucks County Performing Arts Center (BCPAC) has turned 35 years old and the township supervisors have honored the group’s founder and executive director Mary Borkovitz with a proclamation at the board’s June 19 meeting.

“It brings musical performances into the community,” said Supervisor Chairman Pete Stainthorpe. “It’s really a special, special program.”

Reading from the proclamation presented to Borkovitz, Stainthorpe said that the BCPAC “continues to enrich the lives of Bucks County residents by presenting performing arts to the community.

“Mary is certainly at the top of the list of people living here,” he added.

)RunGHG Ln 1978, WKH BC3$C fiUVW KHOG LWV SHUIRUPDnFHV in the township building on Edgewood Road billed as a “Sunday at 3 p.m.” concert series.

It eventually moved into the larger Yardley Community Centre on the borough’s South Main Street holding a successful series of Saturday night concerts. In addition, for the past 16-years the group has had a partnership with the Pennsbury School District, sponsoring art performances for area students.

“It’s been a labor of love for all these years,” Borkovitz, a former school music teacher, said in thanking the supervisors for the acknowledgment.

“I don’t know what else I would be doing with my time. It just became a part of me.”

Since 19T8, the BCPAC has received more than $350,000 in donations and grants, much of which has been used to provide Pennsbury students with live arts programs, a well as seven-years of dance residencies.

According to the Bucks County Performing Arts Center literature, it’s committed through live concerts to “enriching the cultural life of the community through performing art’s power to communicate and inspire, educate and entertain.”

In addition to the Saturday night concerts at the community centre and the collaboration with the school district, the BCPAC is working to extend its reach around Bucks County, including a partnership with the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown.

7KH BC3$C LV IunGHG WKURuJK PDny nRn-SURfiW JURuSV, including the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the dreater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. The business community also has provided donations, such as: McCaffrey’s Supermarkets, Wells Fargo, Target and Comcast.

“This program will not go away,” Borkovitz told the LRwHU 0DNHfiHOG VuSHUYLVRUV, “WKHUH DUH DUH SHRSOH Rn WKH [BCPAC] board that will succeed me.”