Community Creative Center Expands, Hires New Leadership
Community Creative Center will hold its Holiday Bazaar on Dec. 7 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For sale will be pottery and art by the Center’s own participating artists, students and staff. Located at the Center in the Nadine Baum Studios in Fayetteville. For more information, visit communitycreativecenter.org.
Staff Report
Community Creative Center located in the Nadine Baum Studios in the heart of Fayetteville is expanding its classes, hiring new staff and holding a holiday bazaar to highlight the work of artists who use their facilities, all in the name of expanding arts in Northwest Arkansas.
Program expansion
Plans for program expansion include a Children’s Clay Studio, a more diverse array of visual arts classes and camps offered for children and adults, and new partnerships with community organizations. CCC will also open new offices in Blair Studio at Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios, and offer regular hours of operation, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday.
After-school children’s classes, a staple of the Center’s programming, will continue, while new home school classes and the Super Saturday Series will be added. For adults, evening classes in mixed media, figure drawing, pottery wheel, fiber arts and drawing will continue, and new four-week Saturday handbuilding workshops will be added. For the full list of classes, see below or visit communitycreativecenter.org/classes
Making It Possible
The Center receives funding from the Arkansas Arts Council, Windgate Foundation, Fayetteville A&P, the Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation and the Baum Charitable Trust. This summer the Center received its first funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The multi-year, capacity building grant is designated for the hiring of staff to help the Center achieve its new goals of growth and impact in the community.
New Leadership
The board of directors of the Center (formerly Northwest Arkansas Community Creative Center), a non-profit visual arts organization announced the hiring of Barbara Putman, former development executive at Walton Arts Center, as their executive director.
According to Board President Marcella Thompson, “It is truly a pleasure to announce the new and exciting future of (Center). We are grateful to founders Susan Hutchcroft and Daymara Baker for their vision and hard work, as well as to our current board of directors who just didn’t know when to quit, and to a core of faithful supporters who believed in us over the last few challenging years. And now, thanks to the generosity of the Walton Family Foundation and an energetic, experienced new staff, we are poised to become what we always knew we could be: a community visual arts center where arts education is available and accessible to all.”
Putman, CCC board member for the past 3 years, has served as the interim director of development at Walton Arts Center, while also managing the Arts Center’s grant program. In her 12-year tenure at WAC, she worked to secure 25 percent of the annual operating budget from grants awarded by local, regional and national funders and agencies. Putman said she will focus on program expansion, fundraising, marketing and strategic planning.
“With our successful history and our current resources and support, the potential for this ‘lump of clay’ to be molded into a vibrant, energized community asset is huge. I’m honored to be a part of it,” Putman said.
The board has also hired teacher and artist Joy Price as education program manager, responsible for day-to-day operations of classes, camps and the Center studio programs. Price has been an art teacher in Florida for the last six years where she taught Kindergarten through 12th grade and A.P. Art History. Prior to teaching art, Joy worked as executive co-chair and Arts education director at the Mount Dora Center for the Arts in Florida. She earned her art degree in Illustration from Ravensbourne College of Art and Design in London, England. Joy is also a ceramic artist; working from her own studio in Rogers she sells her work all over the world.
“The Community Creative Center has an outstanding facility for arts education and I am thrilled by the potential for creative learning that will take place here,” Price said.
For more information about CCC, visit www.communitycreativecenter.org.
