ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center is a special place where stories come alive and imagination rules the day. There literally is no place else quite like it in the world. Part of what makes ImaginOn so special is its innovative and welcoming architecture, but I think the main reason that ImaginOn is such a unique place is the way it combines the resources and programming associated with a children’s library with the offerings of a vibrant children’s theatre company. In a sense, ImaginOn is not only a place; it’s also a catalyst that brings books and plays together, often resulting in a form of alchemy or, to use a more modern term, synergy.
About a week ago, I took a group of UNC Charlotte students to ImaginOn to work on a research project related to the Caldecott Medal. These students are in my advanced summer seminar on award-winning children’s literature, and one of the awards I am covering is the Caldecott Medal, which is awarded annually to an excellent picture book. ImaginOn has a complete, non-circulating collection of the past winners of this award, and I assigned my students to examine this collection. Before the students set to work on their research project, however, they were treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of ImaginOn by Becca Worthington, the head Children’s Librarian at ImaginOn.
My students loved their tour of ImaginOn. For many of them, it was their first time visiting ImaginOn, and they appreciated Becca’s informative and enthusiastic introduction to this unique place. Afterward, I thought that the readers of my Storied Charlotte blog might also appreciate hearing from Becca, so I asked her if she would send me a few paragraphs about ImaginOn and her association with this place. Here is what she sent to me:
It would be almost impossible to discuss story spaces in Charlotte without mentioning ImaginOn: The Joe & Joan Martin Center. ImaginOn is the only existing hybrid children’s theatre/children’s library in the United States. It’s a sparkling, magical building full of life and energy, and it is the 16-year-old partnership between Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (one of the top professional children’s theatre companies in the country) and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (one of America’s leading urban public library systems), which have the shared mission of bringing stories to life.
It holds a particularly special place in my heart because I wrote my thesis on it. My undergraduate degree is in playwriting, and I’ve always been a drama nerd. Before I moved to Charlotte, I was working in book publishing during the day and moonlighting as Literary Manager for an off-Broadway theatre company. When I was getting my Masters in Library Science (MLS), I was startled by how many performance-averse students were in my classes–especially since children’s librarianship is essentially musical theatre and weird voices and puppetry arts in front of a live audience–so for my capstone project I decided to track and document the lack of performative and theatrical training for children’s librarians at all 48 MLS programs in the country. In my research, I stumbled across ImaginOn and realized it was the only library in the U.S. doing what I was arguing all libraries should aspire to do. By pure luck, they were hiring a head Children’s Librarian, and my skillset made me a unique fit for this absolute dream of a job.
One of the first things anyone notices when you walk into ImaginOn (if it’s not the huge dragon lurking overtop of the entrance) is the spiral sculpture in the center of the building, called our Story Jar, which is covered with dangling objects from picture books and past shows. The base of the StoryJar is full of marbles, and–a fun, lesser-known fact–when the building was created, children were invited to sit at self-guided touchscreen stations where they were prompted to create original stories and “submit” them to the StoryJar. For each story submitted, a marble dropped down. Now there are thousands of marbles in the StoryJar, and each one represents a story created within our building.
The people hired to work at ImaginOn are entertainers by nature, whether that be library staff doing storytimes, drama programs, or traditional storytelling or the actors, costumers, set designers, and technical crew that are creating the full stage productions at the two indoor theatres in the building. And children are natural storytellers as well, which is why many of the activities to do in our building are designed to be self-guided, from little ones putting on a puppet show up to adolescents creating content with the Teen Loft’s bluescreen film technology.
Because we are a story space that was so specifically created for crowds, the pandemic has been an interesting thing to navigate. After all, a story needs an audience more than anything else. But as things normalize, as the crowds begin to come back, and as we offer things like EpicFest (Charlotte’s annual author and literacy festival, based out of ImaginOn, photo attached) and Children’s Theatre’s season-opener of Annie, I am confident that ImaginOn will be a space that brings stories to life once again, better than ever.
I thank Becca for giving my students a tour of ImaginOn and for sharing her insights into this special place. One of the reasons that Storied Charlotte is such fertile ground for stories to take root is that it is home to a veritable greenhouse for stories, and that greenhouse is called ImaginOn.