It’s new. It’s a funky, fun place for kids and parents. And it’s in the South Slope. Sounds like something OTBKB should know about.

And now I do.

Located at 426-429 15th Street, the Hootenanny Art House presents (among other things) something called Open Family Art every Saturday from 3-5 p.m, which sounds like a great weekly art making activity for kids and parents. Here’s a description from the HAH website.

Paints, crayons and pastels. Cardboard, tissue paper and string! Fabric and lace and macaroni and glue guns! What can you make? What inspires you? Your 2 year old? Your 5, or 7 year old? Your Mother in law? This is free art play at its best. We’ll put the plastic on the floor and we’ll clean up the mess. Make a mural, a mobile, a collage, or just watch your kid create an entire city with a bottle of Elmers glue. She can see it, you know she can.

Every first Saturday of every month is pay what you can! Otherwise it’s $10 per family suggested donation to drop in and play with paint all afternoon

Hootenanny House has been featured in Brooklyn Parent Magazine, and they offer all kinds of classes, including Music Together, Writing Stories for Your Children, Dance, Beginning Guitar for Big Persons, Voice, Yoga and more.

They want to offer ukulele for kids and grown ups but it hasn’t gathered much interest. I say it’s a great idea. Buy a couple of Flukes or Fleas and give them a call: 718-369-0528.

You’ll be playing ukulele duets in no time.

In Abigail Kramer’s article in Brooklyn Parents owners Pete Heitmann and Kira Smith describe their desire to start this kid-centered South Slope business as a way to work and be around their kids.

As artists, Heitmann and Smith have supported themselves by teaching, tending bar and delivering messages. Heitmann began teaching Music Together classes four years ago, when Smith was pregnant with the couple’s daughter Zoe. The job, says Heitmann, “was something of a fluke. But I went with it and discovered this wonderful world — you can’t have a bad day when you’re jumping around like a kangaroo with a bunch of three-year-olds.”

Starting a business, says Smith, “is not something we would have contemplated before we had kids. Once you become a parent, you want to work — you don’t want to leave that world — but you want your kids around.” Zoe has already contributed to the creation of the space, says Heitmann, pointing to a bathroom door and strip of molding his daughter painted. (The door has since undergone a redesign; the molding strip stands monument to Zoe’s burgeoning decoration skills).

Here’s the blurb from HAH’s informative website.

Our vision for Hootenanny Art House is to put a swinging screen door on a shared home where families can come together and engage in a vibrant creative community. We want folks to sing, dance, make stuff out of glue and tissue paper, eat pie together, play the ukulele, laugh, cry, and oh yes, let the kids have those wild wicked tantrums and know that no one will be giving you the evil eye.