Local Folks: Kathryn D. McAvoy
Kathryn McAvoy has always had a love for the arts and helping others find their passion. Fifteen years ago, she had been driving her three daughters – Ava, Jessica and Kendall – all over the city to different art programs when she decided to combine those loves through the opening of The Performers Academy (TPA), a center for arts education and development that provides a safe place for teens in Jacksonville to express themselves.
“I put everything all under one roof,” she said. “It provides arts for all, particularly using arts as healing.”
McAvoy later became involved in the foster care system and learned about the struggles foster children go through. She shifted her focus to helping those children, as well as those in detention centers, moving TPA to a nonprofit in 2012.
“When I was a teenager and my parents got divorced, the arts really saved me,” said McAvoy. “It was a way for me to be able to express myself when I was in pain or hurting mentally. And these days, with mental health being such an issue for so many kids…the kids need a way to be able to express themselves. And so that’s what we do. We teach them how to express themselves through poetry, singing, music, creating beats, dance, fashion and design.”
TPA now offers a free after-school program for middle and high schoolers, as well as an onsite therapist and tutor. It does outreach into schools and detention centers to use the arts as a form of self-expression, behavioral diversion and intervention. It also has a program called Project Poem that blends classical literature with pop culture.
“To be able to say Shakespeare’s relevant, we show how there’s an overlap with Tupac,” said McAvoy. “To get teenage boys to learn how to rap without using profanity is nothing short of a miracle.”
McAvoy grew up in the arts. Her mother was a professional dancer before marrying her father and starting her own dance studio. Her father, a surgeon by trade, was a concert pianist. McAvoy plays the flute, saxophone and oboe, and was also a dancer and actress.
Originally from New Orleans, she went to school in Chicago, worked in Los Angeles, then for IBM for 13 years, which brought her to Jacksonville, where she has been for 40 years.
After leaving IBM, McAvoy became a serial entrepreneur: a training company, internet business, co-owner of the Jacksonville Tomcats arena football. She’s started more than 25 businesses, including Acme Barricades. Anyone who has been in Jacksonville for five minutes is familiar with the famous orange barricades.
“You can’t get away from those,” she said. “They’re all over the Southeast now.”
Currently, she is trying to help get a new project off the ground that involves 3D printing of houses.
“I think when you get to a place that you’re comfortable with yourself and your family, then it’s time to take care of other people,” McAvoy said. “And if you can do that in creative ways, like The Performers Academy and 3D construction, then I think that’s our obligation to humanity.”
McAvoy lives on a horse farm with her husband of 13 years, Michael. They have four horses, pigs, cows, chickens, cats, dogs and ducks.
“I thrive on chaos, but the farm is my quiet place,” she said. “It’s a place of rest and relaxation, even though it’s work.”
McAvoy also enjoys riding and showing horses, a childhood hobby that she shared with her daughters before they went off to college. She and Michael further support the arts through seeing shows at the Florida Theater and FSCJ Broadway series and helping produce films for local filmmakers.
“I love the farm, but I need to know that I’m making a difference,” McAvoy said. “My hobby is helping other people make their dreams come true.”
By Jennifer Jensen
Resident Community News
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