Paseo District school offers rich arts education
A once run-down apartment building in Paseo is now a thriving art and sustainability community center, a dream come true for its director and founder, Amy Young.
The former eight-plex at 612 NW 29 was within days of being torn down when it was bought in 2010 by a nonprofit started by Young and James Varnum.
The next five years were spent
rezoning the property and renovating a building that was deemed a blight by the city and was set to be torn down as had happened with a matching building immediately to the west.
“We did everything from windows to electric to plumbing,” Young said. “There was nothing in here except some framing and a basement full of water. Bricks were falling off.”
Prior owners who attempted to redevelop the building, built in 1929 by Paseo developer G.A. Nichols, were unable to proceed without buying the far more expensive empty lot where the matching building once stood to allow for driveway access and parking.
The vision for SixTwelve, however, required no parking and the co-founders called the adjoining owner’s bluff. A couple of years later he sold the corner to Young and Varnum, and that lot now houses the community center and a school operates a garden and other experiments in sustainability.
The garden space includes the only property under one acre that is allowed to house urban chickens.
The results of the first 10-year phase of launching SixTwelve is wrapping up, and the community center is unlike any other in the city.
Inside is an open two-story space where kids play, learn the arts and are surrounded by creativity. SixTwelve
retained two of the eight apartments and one studio space that are used to host artists in residence.
A large kitchen recently opened with a culinary arts class that can host young and old and will be a part of the programming for preschool and after-school kids.
Every part of the design was thought out on how to accommodate young and old and provide a full experience with kitchen tools including a dehydrator, convection oven, steam cooking and conduction heat stovetops.
“I always dreamed about this being a teaching space for all ages,” Young said. “I know some people are taller than I am, so I built the teaching surface higher than normal so tall people can use this. And for the little ones, and me, we designed the first drawer to be a step stool.”
Those attending the first culinary class included local political consultant and longtime supporter Scott Mitchell, who sees SixTwelve as a means to helping attract and retain creative talent.
“I’m an enormous Amy Young fan,” Mitchell said. “She is the richness of the new Oklahoma City. This is a loving gift to our city and its children.”
A tour of SixTwelve includes a chance to see art by Young’s earliest influence, Ruth Cherokee Young.
“She was an artist, a chef, she quilted and she did all sorts of things with her hands,” Young said. “None of this would have happened without her.”
Young traces her vision back to when she was 8 years old. It grew as she realized the shortfalls of arts education at regular schools. After a stint as a music teacher, she was hired as an education curator by the legendary Oklahoma City Museum of Art director Carolyn Hill.
“Everything that is happening here is a result of dreaming up what I would do with my own school if I could,” Young said. “Smaller class size came first. We take no more than 10 kids per class during the day, and about 15 for after school.”
Demand for the school is high despite no marketing and only word-ofmouth guiding people to SixTwelve. Visitors have traveled from across the state.
While full tuition for preschool can run up to $600 a month, others might pay $100, $50 or nothing thanks to scholarships and grants.
“We get people from all socioeconomic levels and from all over the city,” Young said. “We do a sliding scale scholarship. What we’re doing is just a drop in the bucket. These kids deserve to have a good education, and it doesn’t matter where they come from.”