Bloglander

Kristen Black

A scene from one of last year's Girls Rock labs at INK.

The Kendall Yards development perched on the north bank of the Spokane River is growing so fast even we sometimes feel like we can't keep up, and the Inlander sees these almost daily changes right outside its front door. Another new venture is moving in just across the street from Inlander HQ in May, when creative arts education nonprofit INK Art Space is set to relocate. 

Since it was founded last March, INK has been headquartered in a second floor space above the Bartlett (228 W. Sprague), thanks to a subsidized lease agreement with the building's owner, Dan Spalding. There, the nonprofit has hosted a slew of mostly free arts, music and technology workshops and programs for local, school-age kids.

The all-volunteer nonprofit, co-founded by Spalding and Spokane literary icon Jess Walter, has held classes in spoken word poetry, street art, music writing, digital arts and filmmaking, all thanks to local artists and creatives who've donated their time to teach at INK. Many of the free workshops, however, have been taught outside of INK's downtown space at Spokane Public Library branches to better reach underserved communities.

Yet the new Kendall Yards space — INK is actually set to move into a combination of two currently empty street-level spaces (1218 and 1214 W. Summit Parkway) between Mom's Custom Tattoo and MonkeyBoy Bicycles — should help with that aspect, says INK Board President Mischa Jakupcak.

"It's a great neighborhood for foot traffic and kids," Jakupcak says. "Where we’re at right now, around us there isn’t a ton of parking, and it’s not close to neighborhoods where we serve youth. We do a lot of programming with kids from West Central, so we’re nearer to where the kids are."

Kendall Yards developer Greenstone Communities is donating the space to INK through its charitable Greenstone Foundation. The new spot should allow INK to eventually offer a consistent, open-door schedule, whereas now it's typically only open during scheduled events, Jakupcak says. Once the creative space is up and running, she hopes to offer regular after-school programs and tutoring through partnerships with local universities like Gonzaga and Whitworth. 

INK plans to continue partnering with the public library system to host off-site classes, too, among other public venues the nonprofit has worked with in the past year. 

"We're really excited," she says. "We're going to have some tech aspects open to the public and it's really going to be a community center for people of all ages."