PROJECT PRIORITIES

WCCMA provides low-cost and free opportunities for all to enjoy the arts, nurture their talents, and experience the benefits associated with creativity. However, 80% of WCCMA programs are currently offered in venues outside of the City Center. This lack of a central location limits participation and engagement. With the creation of the Claremont Creative Center, we bring our operations under one convenient roof. The downtown location is walkable for more than 51% of Claremont residents and from Stevens High School and Claremont’s Middle School. With a highly visible, walkable downtown location, patron amenities, ADA compliance, multiple creative spaces, and support systems such as staffed box office and administrative offices, The Claremont Creative Center will allow greater accessibility to WCCMA, provide breadth to its programs, and be a source of civic pride.

Our PROFESSIONAL CONCERT SERIES provides vital connections between world-class guest artists, WCCMA, and our rural community. In our new home, we will use our unique and intimate performance venue to curate concerts by diverse musicians who perform classical, world, jazz, and new music. While in residence, guest artists will weave themselves into the fabric of our community — performing, teaching, leading school residencies — and Claremont will become an artistic home wherein collaborations can flourish and commissioned music will celebrate our region.

As a female led organization, we feel an urgency to introduce students and audiences to a range of cultures and ideas on-stage, in classrooms, in culinary and art experiences, and in our leadership. We are committed to highlighting black composers, composers who identify as female, indiginous performers, and other world cultures. We reflect this commitment in the materials we use with our students: our Art Box program utilizes picture books that feature racial justice, historical figures, and characters from marginalized groups and our World Dinners bring Korean, Norwegian, Italian and other cuisines into the homes of Claremont citizens. Our Artistic Advisory Board is composed of creative thinkers from all over the world.

WCCMA and The Claremont Creative Center will be engines in our region’s creative economy. The Center will integrate a variety of income-producing spaces and technologies to support creative initiatives. The facility will provide jobs in the immediate region, doubling the Claremont arts staff employment for non-public school employees. Shared work and studio spaces will incubate and develop creative businesses. Ancillary spending will impact local businesses: Americans for the Arts reports that for every $1 spent on an arts event, $18 in related spending occurs at local restaurants, stores, and for services such as child care. Regional employers report that they are dependent on a thriving cultural scene for employee recruitment and retention. Finally, the revitalization of a long-empty downtown property has proven to be a stimulus for further development in other communities: in the 5 years since Northern Stage’s Barrette Center opened in White River Junction, 6 new restaurants opened and more than $65Million of building projects were completed or are underway.

An ever-growing slate of world-class artists view Claremont as a creative home and contribute to our local educational systems, civic institutions, and economy. The Claremont Creative Center is designed to create synergy between the performing, visual, and literary arts, supporting the mastery, performance, and production of multiple disciplines. With a flexible, intimate performance venue maxing at 100 seats, practice rooms, instrument storage, gallery spaces, dressing rooms, green room, state-of-the-art lighting, projection, sound, and recording equipment, plus a fully equipped kitchen, there is nothing else like this space in  the Upper Valley Region. This unique space is designed to nurture the artists of today and tomorrow, stimulate community connection, attract a diverse pool of world-class talent, and be a source of pride for our community.