thank you, nuçi’s space! Recognizing the People Behind the Non-Profit’s 10-year Success
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he game of how you get healthy— and stay that way—has changed. It’s still changing, maybe right now: This very week, as this article will be making its way through the editorial thoroughfares, major market reforms will be enacted in accordance with the epic health care overhaul passed earlier this year. Whether these changes are for better or for ill are for politicized AM radio listeners or perhaps the slightly more informed (fortune tellers, for example) to debate. Let’s stick to what we know. If you are an American who wishes to spend the majority of your time playing music, you are more than likely uninsured. Almost no one would deny that music is a necessity to get from one sunup to the next, and at the same time, being an American musician is not something that comes with full dental, to put it glibly. We all need music, and musicians need more than what they get. So where does that leave us? Answer: we, collectively, are left far better off because of Nuçi’s Space. The local nonprofit, now entering its 10th year down the hill from downtown on Oconee Street, has strived, essentially, to pull musicians out of their underclass status and provide them with services many people take for granted. Chiefly, it serves as a lighthouse to those in need of mental health care, referring individuals to counseling so as to aid them as they contend with depression, anxiety or worse. It offers connections to health care professionals working in the realms of the eyes, ears and body. Its headquarters is also the home of several soundproofed, clean practice rooms. Nuçi’s Space organizes Camp Amped, the music summer camp for local kids. The sprawling nature of its operation is staggering, especially when you consider its small staff—which is exactly what Flagpole intends to do with this article: consider the names and faces of Nuçi’s Space. The most important name, of course, is Nuçi Phillips. Nuçi was a well-liked local musician and student who suffered from clinical depression and, on Thanksgiving Day of 1996, took his own life. It’s been said that suicide is a pointless act, but beyond whatever truth that may bear, the fact that Linda Phillips was able to funnel the mourning she felt for her son’s passing into something like Nuçi’s Space stands in noble counterpoint.
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Linda Phillips
Bob Sleppy
Bob Sleppy
“Well, to begin with, my husband and son “I was first introduced to and I wanted to do something to remember Nuçi’s Space through a benNuçi,” says Linda from her home in Atlanta. efit concert in the beginning “We’re health professionals, and my older son of October of 1999, and that’s is a musician, so health and music are obviwhen I started learning details of ously really important to us. We wanted to do Nuçi’s Space and what the plan something to remember Nuçi that would help was,” says Bob Sleppy. “I got to other people in a sustaining way, something know Linda over the next couple that would help the community.” Linda, a of months, and then she offered positive force with seemingly unyielding forward momentum, came to town looking to get things done and needed to Laura Ford familiarize herself with Athens at large. It should be no surprise that when Mrs. Phillips sought out an ambassador, all-around musician, producer and abiding local hero, David Barbe was at her service. “He was really the only person who I knew in Athens at that time,” says Linda of Barbe, who produced an album for Nuçi. “So, I called David and said, ‘What would it take to do something like this?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’d need electricity.’” The pair scouted out abandoned warehouses on the outskirts of town, eventually selecting the location at 396 Oconee St. As David Barbe introduced her to representatives of both the health and music communities, Linda wrote a letter to friends and relatives seeking out donations to start up her goal of a practice space that doubled as—and ultimately funded—a mental health resource center. The resultant outpouring totaled $30,000—the fledgling nonprofit’s initial budget. “It wasn’t long after that that we got a call from a therapist in Athens saying, ‘I have a musician in my office; me the job of executive director. I was playhe needs therapy but can’t afford it, so do ing in bands and working on finishing up a you think you could help?’ So, we took the record.” That record was You Must Be This Tall, money that we got from my letter and we the debut album from the band called Michael, started doing the therapy part before we even for which Bob played drums. Suddenly, the got into the building. By the time we actually convergence of themes in his life was striking: opened the physical space, we had 40 or 50 musicians that we were helping.” And in 1999, “When I was a sophomore in college at the University of Georgia, a really close friend of the final year of Nuçi’s Space as an idea withmine committed suicide,” says Sleppy. “That out tangible form, Linda met Bob Sleppy.
FLAGPOLE.COM ∙ SEPTEMBER 29, 2010
was the first person of my own age that I was close to that I’d lost, and the first person that I knew that committed suicide, so it had a pretty profound impact on me. It was kind of a catalyst for me to want to drop out of school and play music full time, and it’s one of the reasons why the band that I ended up playing in was in part named after my friend that committed suicide.” Bob wasn’t only Linda’s first hire: he was the sole employee for the nascent period of the space’s activity. He worked on the business and promotion aspects from home, and spent as much time on-site coordinating with those working on construction. He was there when Nuçi’s Space officially opened its doors on Sept. 20, 2000. Little has changed since then for Bob, whose commitment to Nuçi’s Space has led him to work in myriad varied capacities—when Flagpole reached him, he was just coming down from