- [Narrator] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

Support for this program was generously provided by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County with generous funding from the Muriel O'Neil Fund.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Lissette Campos, and this is Greater Sarasota.

Known for its vibrant art scene and community involvement, Sarasota is a region that has seen tremendous growth in recent years.

In this program, we explore the people and the places that contribute to this changing metropolis in a very distinct way.

We start here at Rise and Nye's, a place where you can grab your morning coffee, enjoy some afternoon ice cream, and make a difference with every purchase.

For Rise and Nye's, inclusion and dignity drives this downtown business first by hiring those with disabilities and then by providing employees with every opportunity to succeed through cutting edge virtual reality training.

- Rise and Nye's, inclusion jobs and dignity, giving a population that has been discarded, forgotten, marginalized forever.

Rise and Nye's is here to give them an opportunity to shine, an opportunity to show their abilities, to be included, just like everybody should be included.

(piano music) - Hello, welcome, welcome, welcome.

- [Customer] Of course.

- Rise and Nye's is a coffee and ice cream shop at downtown Sarasota, but it's one with a mission.

Most of our staff has intellectual developmental disabilities.

Most of these guys never get a job, 80% never get a job, and it's important to have a space for them to show their abilities so that people can meet them, realize that they can run a whole coffee and ice cream shop on their own and maybe they'll hire them in their businesses.

You and I can take our resume and go apply for the job that's posted across the street.

These guys are not able to do that.

They don't get the chance, whether it's the fear of difference from these other employers, or they think gosh, if I've got Dylan working here, I need to have three people to help him, which isn't the case.

- Single mint chip.

- Thank you, Dylan.

- No problem.

I actually just started here when they first opened.

I was actually the first new employee that started here and I had no idea what the heck I was doing, but I had some extra help from people who were experienced working here before.

I was a nervous type of guy, but I'm very friendly and I have amazing customer services.

Beaver gave me the name the mayor because I like to interact with the people who come in into the shop.

They get ice cream and coffee.

All of us here work here with a unique disability, and for me, I can name you three.

I have ADHD.

It means I have a harder time concentrating in one spot.

I have a chromosome disorder.

It means when my chromosomes broke off somewhere and went somewhere else in my body and I used to have epilepsy but not anymore.

I do enjoy working here with my coworkers.

They also have unique disabilities like me.

They really understand like what my challenges are and what my understanding is.

- Three, maybe four years ago now, I met a couple of guys at at an event at Ringling College and they were filmmakers and they were starting to do virtual reality work.

So I thought, gosh, if we could build a virtual coffee shop and give these guys an opportunity to train, to practice in that environment, may be able to help to lessen things once they get into the shop.

Many people with autism and other issues have sensory problems.

The humming that you can hear in the shop, the fridge, the grinder in the shop, the espresso machine when that steam wand goes off, those things can drive somebody out the door who have sensory issues.

So I met with these guys and I said, can you build me a Rise and Nye's?

Can you build me a coffee and ice cream shop with all the noise, with all the chaos?

So I met with the gang from Easter Seals.

We put a bunch of grant money together to be able to build these things.

When we discussed it, instead of just building some coffee shop that's some random coffee shop, let's model your real coffee shop.

And we figured that that would work really well for these individuals with disabilities.

So that's what we got started with and we made the full coffee shop with these three different modules in it and we started putting our clients, the Easter Shields clients in it before the coffee shop even existed, and getting them used to the idea, so when they got there for their first day, they didn't have that deer in the headlights situation.

They weren't scared at least less, right?

We basically cast what they're seeing onto a screen in the room through a Chromecast, and then the teacher is able to go, oh, no, no, push that button or pick that cup up, you know, and guide them, give them that.

Sometimes it's even hand over hand, you know, depending on how that client is.

- So you can do like working with the grinder, working with the espresso machine or there's scooping with ice cream, making ice cream sandwiches.

It feels weird when you have the headset on, but you have to get used to it.

You have to get used to the background environment.

You have to get used to the noise in the background, and it sometimes gets so distracting.

Yeah, it's a lot of commotion.

It's not easy for us employees who are very sensitive to some things.

- So now we have this amazing virtual reality program with three key modules for Rise and Nye's.

We started adding in almost like life skills a little bit in these things.

So it's not just like, hey, grind a bag of coffee for this customer.

It's like, here's your order.

The customer wants a quarter pound of coarsely ground coffee in a bag, right?

Our client gets the order and we do something.

We tell 'em to follow the green.

So on the beginner level, when the first step is lit up green and you go and you pick that up, and then in this particular situation, it's take the lid off the coffee beans first and then it shows you on the counter where to put the lid and then it shows you what to get the scoop and how many beans to scoop to fill that order.

We're now in a second phase of the coffee shop that we're building and we've added in an avatar.

When you're delivering the bag to the customer or the coffee, we encourage them to make some eye contact, you know, and it registers a little bit of time each time and we can see, we can start to gauge, you know, after we look at it like, oh, you should a little longer, or maybe it's too long.

Those kind of things are more therapy than just the training.

- To me, it just shows the amazing power of virtual reality and how it's helped spaces like this and they can see so many other applications for it as well.

- This idea, this tool is here to potentially not just entertain people but to help people.

Using tech for good, to bring digital therapeutics effectively to people, not just neurodiverse.

We can help anybody in the future with this sort of technology.

Good job, man.

You did good today.

- Got a lot better.

- Thank you.

- No problem.

- Pleasure sir.

- So 35 people work through this place.

We've got 300 on the wait list, so we need to do something to help give more opportunities to these people with disabilities.

How do you hire people with Down syndrome?

How do you hire somebody with autism?

You just hire them.

(Beaver laughs) Just hire them and give them a shot.

They're gonna show up early.

They're gonna be dedicated employees.

They're gonna do everything they can to succeed.

They want to succeed.

They will probably surprise you and they're just so proud to have a space to do that.

- You never judge a person by their looks.

It doesn't matter what color your skin is and what your gender is and what your ability is.

It's all about enjoying who you are and the world that we live in to this day.

- Lifting others lifts us all.

(upbeat music) - Etienne "EJ" Porter's talent and vision has opened doors to musicians both locally and globally, from establishing Sarasota's first black-owned recording studio to creating a music program in Mozambique Africa, EJ inspires people to develop and invest in music.

- If you can do small things well, the universe will open up the bigger things for you.

You know, but you have to treat the small things with the same respect as you treat the big things.

(upbeat music) I grew up being a young kid just playing the drums, enjoying getting the opportunity to play in church and develop my skill.

(drum music) I love doing it.

I do it for myself, but people receive some type of joy from watching me do it.

We're the backbone of the rhythm section.

If, you know, with no drums, it's like, it's blah.

Once you put that beat to it, everybody can stomp their feet, clap their hands.

When I'm playing the drums, I'm not thinking about anything else.

I'm in the moment.

I'm not thinking about the future.

I'm not thinking about the past.

I'm thinking about this song right now.

I had a recording studio at my home and turned out some great records, but I knew I wanted a recording space.

We ended up having a grand opening on March 3rd, 2011, and that's been 12 years ago.

(electronic music, EJ hums) - Ba ba ba ba ba.

Ba ba ba ba ba.

Ba ba ba ba ba.

- After we figure out what the melody line is, then we can add.

- Like the words.

- Add the words.

I want people to feel like anything is possible.

When you come in here, this is where you can achieve those things that you want to do musically.

Check, check, check, check.

Just really grateful that I've had the client base.

I've had the support from the community and clients from around the world feel like they can create here and kind of call it, you know, their creative home.

♪ Some things don't happen how we want 'em to ♪ - My mother, Cynthia Porter, rest her soul.

She's no longer with us, but she's with me every day but no longer in earthly form.

Being an artist, actress, and just being a loving, caring mother who knew that I needed different parenting from my brothers and sisters.

She made me feel like I could do anything.

When I saw her mentoring other young ladies who didn't have that same kind of mentoring at home, it just made me say, hey, that's the stuff that you do.

You see a need, you feel a need.

You see someone who needs something, you jump in, you just try to help as best as you can.

- This guy is the go-to producer and pretty much mentor of Sarasota, Florida, and he's a gem in the city.

♪ And the rocket's red glare ♪ ♪ The bombs bursting ♪ - Chris was brought to me at, I think he was eight years old.

He was doing talent shows at school and his mom and close friend of mine brought him and said, hey, you gotta check this little kid out.

When I met Chris and saw him perform, I said, there's something special there.

From there, we just started working very diligently on what he said he wanted to do as an individual, and I devoted myself to making sure he had every opportunity that came through me and we went from performing at, you know, small places to us getting calls to go and do tours and the first time he stepped on that big stage, I was like, bro, this is what you prayed for.

(peaceful music) - I took one four and made it.

- Oh, and you've manipulated it.

Having EJ as a mentor since I was a young kid really is a blessing.

I think we're all in search of our collaborative soulmates, and he's definitely somebody that came along and saw something in my eyes that really spoke to him and, you know, inspired him to want to develop the talents that he saw in me.

I'm a biracial Jewish kid who was raised by a single mother, but I think a young man not having a biological dad, my mom was so smart to put amazing black men around me.

When you're a young man, you look to your elders for advice on how to be.

I think for that reason alone, not even talking about the music, EJ will forever be, you know, a part of my family, a part of my life.

(violin music) - There are so many options and things you can do in life that may differ from what someone says.

I've had a chance to be a musician my whole life.

Some of these kids are wanting to be where you are.

They have goals and aspirations to be a singer or a performer.

If they can see you do it, all we want to do is just empower people to have the same ability to go after their dreams like you're going after yours.

I saw from an early age that music connects with everybody.

The music program in Mozambique was started from me visiting Mozambique in 2019.

I got over there and saw the kids and I was inspired to want to help him.

Saw the little girl beating the drum.

It was like a drum that you put liquids in, not a drum drum, but she was beating the drum with the shaved off tree limb as a drumstick, and when I saw that, I was like, I gotta give these kids some instruments.

Set the goal and we went over there and bought instruments and started a whole music program.

(foreign language) The kids were just shocked that all this was theirs and I started just teaching music classes, so they was learning drums from me and then we had iPads that had lessons on that.

A lot of my musician friends over in the states helped prepare for them.

It was just heart touching to see like, these kids never had this opportunity and now we gave them this opportunity and they are playing now.

They have bands over there now.

(foreign language) (upbeat music) Having expression from all people allows everyone to know that the arts are important.

Young artists, older artists, people who like jazz, people who like opera, people who like rap, people who like hip hop, people who like gospel all feel like Sarasota is a place that I can practice my craft and get good at my craft.

And so for us, it's always about supporting the arts with not just what we say, but supporting the arts with our actions and what we do and creating an environment that we would like to see.

(upbeat music) - Pamela Callender takes an artistic approach to landscape design.

Turning to eco art as a response to environmental concerns, she uses native plant species to expand natural habitats, connect communities, and allow wildlife to flourish.

- Landscape design and gardening is the oldest form of eco art.

For me I go another step further in saying it solves environmental issues.

All artists go through periods in their life that caused them to take one avenue or another.

As my children got older, I decided I needed to get a real job.

Late in life and still searching, I answered an ad in the paper to become a professional ballroom dance instructor and I thought at age 43 I'm too old for that, but as it turned out, I wasn't.

I was a good educator and a good instructor.

(piano music) I had my students dance on different substrates, different material, different floors, and I wanted to capture the footwork that they were doing and see if I could capture it in paint and take photographs of the images that the footprints left.

I found that I was able to identify different ballroom dances by the different patterns on the floor that were left, the residue on the floor.

The more research I did about the environment and how I related that to ballroom dance elements and technique, the more I got into and started researching artists that were involved in environmental art, earth art, land art, anything that was outside of the gallery.

I left that job to move in to stay home with my parents.

My father died and my mother was disabled, so rather than put her in a home, I left my job and stayed here in her house to take care of her.

The plants became a respite for me.

This is where I made a transition into a real serious art career.

I was able to start expressing myself and my artwork through the environment.

My property outside became my studio.

(water sprays) Even Monet considered his masterpiece to be his gardening, not necessarily his paintings of the gardening, but the gardening itself and his gardens were masterful.

I personally consider my masterpiece to be the caring of my mom.

I started buying and learning more about native plants and why they're important.

That's when I started really thinking about design and landscape design in particular.

- Pamela's been working with us for a a number of years now and she started out helping at the nursery and Pamela fit the bill, especially with her art background.

She really is able to create artful landscapes by combining her artist capabilities with her knowledge of native plants.

It's important to use native plants because as more and more of Florida has developed, we're losing a lot of our natural habitat and along with that a lot of our birds and butterflies and wildlife.

So the more native plants you can use by providing wildlife cover, wildlife food with a lot of shrubs or trees that provide berries or seeds that a lot of birds can use.

We have about 15 different host plants, which are the plants the adult butterfly lays its eggs on.

Without those plants in the environment or in the landscape, you lose a large population of your butterflies and other beneficial insects that depend on all these native plants.

- I had a few different landscapers, but they just didn't understand what I was trying to go for and what I was trying to accomplish.

By having a habitat for the wildlife, she could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish from a scientific background, but she could also help me make it beautiful.

- [Director] Interview, take one.

(gloves snap) (peaceful music) (leaves rustle) (peaceful music) - Landscape design has become the forefront of what I do now.

It's not just about designing the outside of your property.

Plants are not ornaments.

Plants are very specific life sources for all of us, not just humans.

- Most modern landscapes are the wow effect, so they use a lot of plants that really aren't suited for the house.

They aren't suited for the neighborhood.

They're suited more for instant visual effect.

- We've destroyed what the true Florida really is.

It has become the norm to bulldoze an entire ecosystem.

Build human habitat, fine, but replace it with the ecosystem that you took out.

Wildlife and plants will live without us, but we can't live without them.

(peaceful music) - The destruction of Venice Theater's main building after Hurricane Ian was devastating, but volunteers and members of the second largest community theater in the country got right to work proving that the show must go on.

- [Reporter] Take a look at the cars now.

They're all bunched into each other over there.

- The wind continues to ramp up.

- But we're gonna get smashed here.

There are downed trees literally everywhere all over this area.

- Got a text message, just said, what happened to the theater?

Less than a minute later he texted me, we will find a way.

Venice Theater was founded in November of 1950, so the seats were actually borrowed from the local funeral home and they hoped that nobody died during the run of a show cause they had to go move the chairs back and forth.

This building is one of the original buildings of the city of Venice.

It was the basketball gymnasium and armory for KMI, for Kentucky Military Institute or had been.

In terms of the theater's value to the community, I would invite them to envision it without it.

The restaurants are full, they're double staffed when we have performances.

- Join us.

♪ If you can be anything, be kind ♪ (performers clap) - It's the second largest community theater in the United States.

It's also the social heart of the community, the cultural heart of the community.

It's the first thing you see when you enter the city of Venice.

It's what sets the tone for what you're going to see the rest of your stay here.

(intense music) - Hurricane Ian has moved on tonight after stamping an indelible mark of death and destruction across Florida.

- The day after the storm was a war zone.

It looked like some of those buildings that you see on the video highlights from the Russian bombing.

The fountain next to the building was full of debris.

Pieces of the building were lying across the street, on the street.

Curtains were hanging limply because they'd been torn off, just soaking wet.

There were some shocks, there were some tears, there were some numbness from seeing what we were seeing.

I've been so proud of everybody, the staff, the volunteers.

I've never seen a group of people as good in a crisis as they've been through the devastation that we all experienced, the gut punch of Hurricane Ian.

There's never been a doubt that we'll be back and be stronger than ever before.

Immediately somebody said, you know, we could do and we could transition.

We've got the other building.

We haven't started reno yet, and within 10 or 15 minutes we started putting together a plan of how we were gonna do this.

Everybody's saying we'll be back.

Donations began the next day, so a 13 year old girl put up a lemonade stand, in less than three hours, raised over $700.

High school students from Booker High School raised $10,000 on their own for the theater.

We have already spent 2.2 million just to get us to this point.

We took exactly 50 days to reopen in the Raymond Center after the storm.

♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ - [Dianne] There's something about theater people.

They are a family.

They come together.

- You ain't getting 88 cents from me, Rose.

- Then I'll get it someplace else, but I'll get it.

I play Mama Rose in Gypsy at Venice Theater.

Gypsy is about a mother who has ambition to make her daughter a star at any cost.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to tackle Rose and in this particular space because usually Gypsy's on a big (indistinct) stage and it's thought of as this big classic musical with the big numbers.

I love that it's intimate.

(crowd claps) I love the opportunity I've had to do this.

This particular experience has been wonderful.

(piano music) You know, you do these shows and you spend so much time together and you are vulnerable together and it becomes this really safe cocoon and then you go back to your lives, but you don't ever spend this time together with this same group of people again.

And that's the tragedy and the beauty of theater.

- I couldn't be more proud of the organization.

It's a group that will not put its head down.

It will not bend to disaster.

We will hopefully reopen in late spring of 2024 if construction begins on schedule in June of 2023.

I believe that the arts are not just a good thing to have.

I believe they're integral to human life.

Community theater is the most inclusive of all art forms.

More people participate and see community theater nationally than any other genre.

That's part of America, and thus it has the opportunity and the responsibility to answer to the betterment of a community, to be a part of the center of it.

We call it the soul, being the soul of the community.

We don't feed you, but we feed your soul.

(upbeat music) - The Fogartyville Community Media and Art Center is a gathering place where art, culture, music, and politics intersect.

The Sarasota landmark gives artists, activists, and nonprofits a safe space to create social change.

- It's important for people to have spaces where they feel free to be themselves.

To fully express themselves.

And I think we give people the opportunity to do that here.

- [Disc Jockey] I am Mario Novera, and this is your Pride Month Minute.

- [Disc Jockey 2] What is wrong with teaching about what really happened in this country?

- Make sure you get down here to Fogartyville and support what's going on here in the community.

Attitude of gratitude, WSLR.

- Community conversations are important and we have them here on the air and we have them live at Fogartyville as well.

People need to talk to each other.

- Same color.

(person in hat laughs) (triumphant music) - I was running for the State House in 2000 and that's where I met my partner, David Beaton.

He became my campaign manager.

We had really energized a lot of the community around issues that we cared about, right?

And we're like, how do we keep it going?

And we thought maybe we should do a coffee house and have live music.

We really do believe that music has the power to heal.

Music has the power to bring people together.

Music has the ability to help people cross those cultural barriers.

Dave and I operated a cafe called the Fogartyville Cafe in Bradenton, and we built a really strong community there and it was really out of that community that we built there that we thought, okay, we can actually do this radio station, right?

We have the support and we first went on the air in the summer of 2005.

(guitar music) The station started in the back room of a residential house on Myrtle and Royal Palm Avenue.

It was a former crack house.

We found a friend who lived in that area and we put our antenna on a 35 foot pole in his backyard.

We sat down with two students who were hosting the radio club and we joined their application.

So we moved here in 2011.

We have about a seven mile radius with our broadcast signal, but we live stream.

We have free mobile apps.

Get us anywhere in the world.

Take us with you.

We are in our values and in our mission of progressive organization.

We promote peace, democracy, social, and economic justice.

We bring people to our stage who progress those values.

And right now with what is happening in the state of Florida, a lot of people don't feel they have a safe space to go, but they know that we are a safe space.

- Happy Pride to every single one of you that have come up today.

(audience member cheers) - I'm the executive director and founder of the Fabulous Arts Foundation, and I'm a musician.

My lyrics are based around like fighting for equality and demanding rights.

I absolutely do think that the LGBTQ+ community is under attack.

A lot of folks that I've been meeting with have informed me that they are fleeing the state because they are trans and they don't feel safe.

It feels different.

(piano music) I think after the, you know, Pulse shooting that happened, a lot of folks have resonated with a very similar thing where they don't feel safe in bars.

And that's kind of always been for the LGBTQ+ community has been our safe space.

And so this has, you know, become, how do we find a way to celebrate community and have a space that's for everyone so being at Fogartyville really lent to having more control of the narrative and be at an indoor venue that's private property.

That felt like a good move for us.

- We want them to be safe, you know.

We want them to be treated with dignity and respect.

What we have right now, it's so polarized and so divisive and there is a lot of hate.

You can't teach about this.

You can't say that.

No, we need to be talking about all of it.

We need to be reading about all of it.

We need this, you know, this is how we grow.

This is how we understand each other.

People can reach a different understanding and open their minds to maybe not agreeing with somebody, but accepting the difference and still respecting the individual.

- This?

(Arlene claps) - [Customer] Yes.

- So cool.

- We think that the way change is made is from the grassroots up, right, from the people up.

The organizing potential of the radio station and the community space is very important.

We are here to support freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom to learn, and freedom to read.

We are supposed to live in a democracy and people need to remember that.

We need to be prepared and we need to be organizing every day to fight back, to protect our rights, and to make sure we save our democracy.

(triumphant music) - Sarasota's cultural diversity is one of its many strengths with neighbors across all communities making this coastal city unique.

We hope you've enjoyed these stories.

I'm Lissette Campos.

Thanks so much for watching.

(triumphant music) - [Narrator] Support for this program was generously provided by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County with generous funding from the Muriel O'Neil Fund.

This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(triumphant music)