The Bell Foundry
- Role
- Co-founder & organizer
- Timeline
- 2010s · Baltimore
Long before Baltimore's glow-up, The Bell Foundry was a social hub where visionaries laid the groundwork for institutions and networks that continue to shape Charm City to this day. It was a Station North DIY space where artists, organizers, and neighbors made a home that institutions weren't offering: shows, studios, events, late-night problem-solving, and a kind of safety that only a chosen family can hold.
The Bell was started by a bunch of kids, ages 17–20, who moved into an old drafty factory together chasing a dream and building a home. I'm proud to have been one of them. Not a day goes by where I don't draw on the lessons we worked out in real time: a crash course in architecture, construction, plumbing, electrical, masonry, event management, live sound, business relationships — and how to learn and ask questions when you don't know the answer.
Where others spent their early adulthood knocking out gen eds, my friends and I were getting our accelerated masters in community development. We built a prolific, internationally acclaimed arts center on a shoestring budget — and learned that culture work and facilities work are the same job if you do them honestly.
Impact & outcomes
- Helped hold space for queer, trans, Black, and brown artists in a city that kept shrinking the map of who belonged.
- Practiced mutual aid as operations, existing in ongoing dialogue with the community around us to use neglected urban space as an incubator for shared ambition.
- Put strangers in conversation and watched new ways of living emerge.