Culture and Civic Life
First Unitarian is a regional community center that provides meeting space on a non-discriminatory basis for many different groups and activities: yoga and aerobics classes, meditation, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, forums by the Americans for Democratic Action and Common Cause, Black Women’s Art Festival, Islamic Relief Day of Dignity, Philadelphia Fringe Festival events, and city-wide vigils honoring victims of violence in Philadelphia.
First Unitarian is home to a concert-grade Casavant pipe organ. With its convenient Center City location, First Church is known as a prime entertainment venue for all ages. Music-for-Children classes, classical music concerts by Dolce Suono, and for young indie rock fans, alternative and punk rock concerts. Music and Arts at First Philadelphia are among the strongest and most diverse of the Center City Philadelphia Churches.
In November 2007, Rolling Stone magazine featured the church as one of the top alternative rock venues thanks to the success of the events organized by R5 Productions in the basement, chapel, and sanctuary. Since the mid-90s, the church's basement, Griffin Hall, known colloquially as "The Church" or simply "First Unitarian" by show goers, has been a popular venue for small-scale independent music concerts in the city. The concerts have featured mostly punk and indie rock artists in the past but have expanded to include other genres as well. An R5 Productions punk-rock concert draws hundreds of young listeners to the sanctuary with a drug- and alcohol-free mission.
Read more about this topic: First Unitarian Church Of Philadelphia
Famous quotes containing the words culture and, culture, civic and/or life:
“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”
—Richard Rodriguez (b. 1944)
“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“I have lifted the veil. I have created life, wrested the secret of life from life. Now do you understand? From the lives of those who have gone before, I have created life.”
—Edward T. Lowe, and Frank Strayer. Dr. von Niemann (Lionel Atwill)