Describe your program
Village Center for the Arts, (VCA) is a nonprofit community fine art center, located in New Milford, CT. We offer a multitude of fine art classes for children and adults, including painting, drawing, pottery, and more. We have after school art classes during the school year and several weeks of summer camp, half day for 3-6 years old, and full day for 7-16. We also host an Open Studio all of our open hours. We are a place of creativity, with a huge supply of various materials.
What are the coolest, most popular features of your program?
Our coolest program is our Unexpected Artist Program. This program allows students from anywhere to come in and create their art related homework projects at no cost. Whether it is simply decorating a poster to a complex paper mache creation of Machu Picchu, the famous "mole" project to Greek City State sculptures, we have assisted with over three thousand projects throughout the last ten years. It is very exciting to watch students actively doing research to make their projects unique.
What impact did your program make in 2020?
By continuing to offer our studios to the community for any creative ideas that anyone may have. Providing an outlet for stress relieving creative fun has been a focal point for VCA throughout the pandemic. We also face-painted at several events over the summer and fall, on a donation basis.
Nominator Justification
Village Center for the Arts in New Milford, CT serves the community as an educational space, offering arts programs. Their mission is to provide a nurturing environment for artistic creativity and development through educational fine art programs and events for all ages. During COVID they provided free kits, left on the porch of their main street facility, for people to use to create something at home, encouraging healing through artistic expression. Follow Instagram @villagecenterforthearts
