Community Art Center, Inc.

Founded in 1937, the Community Art Center is a neighborhood institution committed to our mission: to cultivate an engaged community of youth whose powerful artistic voices transform their lives, their neighborhoods, and their worlds. The Art Center has established an excellent track record of providing creative, challenging learning opportunities to youth. We do this in the context of a family-like environment with intensive social and emotional supports including academic help, mental health and transportation services and up to three full meals a day.??

??The Community Art Center???s arts education programs and public art initiatives promote knowledge of self, connection to history, acknowledgement of place and expression of differences and shared values. Our dedicated staff and volunteers, some of whom grew up at the Art Center, serve our youth as a family network, knowing the hurdles they must master first hand. ?? Read more here

Our Core Values:????

• We believe in the power of young people.
  • We provide opportunities for youth to exercise their power.
  • We use a Youth Development approach.

• We believe in the power of artistic expression.
  • We promote creativity as central to human development and a human right.
  • We use the arts as a tool for personal and social transformation.

• We believe in taking care of ourselves and each other.
  • We support our youth, staff and families to grow.
  • We value diversity.
  • We believe in joyfulness.

• We believe in creating positive change in our neighborhood and beyond.
  • We use our resources to benefit our community.
  • We value local-global connections.
  • We promote social justice.

The Community Art Center maintains a long history of quality, arts-based youth development and community programming - including receiving a Coming Up Taller award in 2006, the Citizens Bank Champion in Action in 2017, being selected to be part of the Barr Klarman Massachusetts Arts Initiative in 2018 and joining The Boston Foundation???s Place Leadership Network in 2019. The Art Center serves as lead agency for the new Port Arise Institute, funded through a multi-year grant from the City of Cambridge Community Benefits Fund. With strategic partnerships in place for the coming year both in the public and private sectors, the Community Art Center is poised to achieve new levels of engagement and investment.