Now, Baltimore, we don’t want this to go to your head, but the Daily Beast thinks you’re pretty smart. In their recent survey of American metropolitan areas with more than a million residents, Baltimore finished 10th out of 55 cities, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Now while these surveys should be taken with a grain of salt — we’re not sure how nonfiction book sales account for 25% of an “intellectual environment” — it does provide a nice chance to look at all the free educational opportunities available in this fair, intelligent city of ours.
The Baltimore Free School in Mt. Vernon (1323 N. Calvert Street) was started by those lovable anarchists at Red Emma’s, who seem to believe that education should be a “grassroots, volunteer-run and community-funded project.” In other words, an education for the people, by the people. What total commies. (We kid.) Classes, though, are varied in scope and topic; everything from “Introduction to Music Theory” to “Man, The Universe, and an End to Poverty: Why and How Natural Law Fixes Everything” to something called simply “Clown.” Stop by and learn something.
The Village Learning Place in South Charles Village (2521 Saint Paul Street), a nonprofit neighborhood library, learning center, computer lab, and community garden, formed in 1997 after the Pratt Library closed their Charles Village branch. Neighborhood residents banded together, restoring the building with volunteer hours and reopening it to fill the community’s need for accessible resources of all kinds. Awesome. Now, the VLP offers a wide range of events and programs; for example the Village U adult enrichment program or the upcoming Holiday Artisan Market.
Of course, where would any intellectual city be without a free public library? The Enoch Pratt Free Library is, as every good library should be, replete with good books and a wide array of community events. With 23 branch locations throughout the city there’s almost certainly one close to you, no matter where you are. And if you’re definition of “borrowing” gets a little stretched from time to time, there’s always the Book Thing to keep you ankle deep in words.
What piques your intellectual curiosity in Baltimore?
Posted in: Baltimore User's Guide, Charles Village, Mount Vernon1 Comment
The Chop has found that The Johns Hopkins Homewood campus is one of the best educational and cultural resources for any Baltimore resident. The Eisenhower Library alone is a huge and tremendous resource which is open to the public everyday and late into the night, where one can find matierial that is impossible to find elsewhere. The campus also continually hosts Authors, speakers, films and other events which are free and open to the public.