Community Art Center

CONTACT:

119 Windsor St.
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-868-7100 x11
communityartcenter.org

Eryn Johnson, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

The first federal housing project in the United States was "Newtowne Court" in Cambridge, in 1936. It offered two rooms in its basement, for piano lessons and art classes, to a new organization: the Community Art Center, which had been founded four years earlier by parents wanting more arts training and experience for their children than public schools were offering in classes.

The Center continued for 50 years as "an arts programming drop-in center," but when the Department of Social Services and the Office for Children were created in the '80s, new government funding enabled it to diversify, as a comprehensive after-school and school-vacation "social service arts organization," serving a densely-populated, ethnically diverse, low-income neighborhood in Cambridge.

CAC's programs utilize the arts to build personal character in disadvantaged youth, and to foster community development. All its teachers are both child-care workers and artists themselves. It has created an annual national Youth-Produced Video and Film Festival; its artists works have been exhibited in Poland and former-Soviet Georgia; it recently launched a computer art program; its media and video facilities are also used by Cambridge public schools. Its services include parent support groups, youth guidance, and employment of community members. 70% of its Teen Media Program students go on to college.

(1997: HUMAN SERVICES: Children and Youth: General)