During 2004, the Banana Factory, whose mission is to kindle, support and celebrate the artistic, cultural and creative spirit of the Lehigh Valley, took major strides toward expanding its arts programming.

Thanks to generous donor support, the arts center was able to expand its educational initiatives to reach more youth in the community. Through the B-Smart, after-school program, which is primarily funded as part of the Pennsylvania Educational Improvement Tax Credit program, 150 middle school students participated in after-school enrichment featuring visual arts and web design. Sixty-five percent of the students increased their grade point average and 54 percent improved in school attendance.

The Banana Factory’s unique program of providing art instruction to incarcerated juvenile males at the Northampton County Juvenile Justice Center was expanded to include weekly instruction throughout the year. Counselors at the Center report extremely positive results from this program. In 2005, ArtsQuest is looking to expand it to provide more engagement with the juveniles after they return to the community.
The Binney & Smith and Banko Family Room galleries played host to several dynamic exhibitions in 2004 while attracting more than 22,000 visitors. Highlights included “A Celebration of Color,” “Olympus Visionaries,” “unseenamerica,” “The Seventh Annual Juried Exhibition of the International Pastel Society” and “Still Life.” As part of First Friday, some 800 people each month visited the Banana Factory, solidifying the arts center’s reputation as a vital anchor of South Bethlehem’s monthly open-house celebration.

The Banana Factory’s talented studio artists also continued to play a vital role in the success of the arts center, sharing their art and educating visitors during First Fridays and open studio hours, teaching classes and programs at the arts center and in area schools, and exhibiting their work in galleries and museums throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.

On the educational front, hundreds of children and adults experienced art through classes in media ranging from watercolors and ceramics to video game design and digital photography. The arts center also launched a local pilot of “unseenamerica,” a unique community program that allows young people to share their views of the world with others through photography. The success of the pilot led to the inclusion of unseenamerica as a regular offering in the project ASPIRE (After-School Partnership for Instruction, Recreation and Enrichment) curriculum.