Downtown Brooklyn is home to a concentration of arts and cultural organizations. Below is a comprehensive listing of organizations in the area, including tenants in the 80 Arts building and South Oxford Space -- both located in the BAM Cultural District.
General Arts/Cultural Organizations
The Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC) is an arts service organization dedicated to helping artists, arts organizations, and community groups promote and sustain the arts. Major areas of service include BAC's Community Arts Re-grant Program, Professional Development Seminars for the Arts, Arts in Education, BAC Folk Arts, the Printmaker's Portfolio Project and the BAC International Film and Video Festival.
The Brooklyn Bridge Park Film Festival is sponsored by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition in cooperation with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. The Summer Film Series features films about Brooklyn, shot in Brooklyn, or by Brooklyn artists. Admission to all films is free.
DUMBO Arts Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and enriching the identity of D.U.M.B.O. as an artists' community. The center also promotes the collective work of emerging artists by producing the annual d.u.m.b.o art under the bridge festival, exhibiting group shows in its fine arts gallery, maintaining a slide registry, and collaborating with other organizations to sponsor local arts events.
The South Of the Navy Yard Artists, Inc. (SONYA) community includes visual artists whose homes, studios or galleries are located within the boundaries of Flatbush Ave., Atlantic Ave., Bedford Ave., and Flushing Ave. in Brooklyn, which essentially falls within the areas of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York (A.R.T./New York) is the service and advocacy organization for the nation’s largest, most artistically influential and culturally diverse theatre community: Off Broadway. Founded in 1972, A.R.T./New York serves nearly 400 not-for-profit theatres throughout New York City.
Mark Morris Dance Group offers classes for adults and children in its state-of-the-art dance facility. Primarily used for the company and school, the center’s five studios, including the largest unobstructed dance studio in the country, are available for rent to nonprofit dance companies at low, subsidized rates.
Heart of Brooklyn Cultural Partnership is a partnership of the leading cultural institutions located near Grand Army Plaza: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park, and Prospect Park Zoo.
BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn is a multi-disciplinary arts non-profit dedicated to presenting quality visual, performing and media arts programs reflective of Brooklyn’s diverse communities, and to providing resources and platforms to support the creative process. BRIC programs include: in the performing arts, Celebrate Brooklyn, a free eight-week performing arts festival in Prospect Park and BRICstudio, a 74-seat performance space that presents and supports the work of performing artists with an emphasis on Brooklyn-based arts organizations; in media, BCAT/Brooklyn Community Access Television, which operates the borough’s public access television channels, offers educational programs and produces television programming about Brooklyn; and in visual arts, BRIC Rotunda Gallery, which presents contemporary art, public events and an innovative arts education program.
Brooklyn Music School (BMS) provides on-site instruction in music and dance, public school outreach programs, and professional performances touching the lives of thousands annually by utilizing a distinguished faculty of 30 artist-educators. Students come to BMS from all walks of life and with diverse goals.
Tenants of 80 Arts - The James E. Davis Arts Building
The following organizations are tenants at 80 Arts, located at 80 Hanson Place. This building is the first completed renovation in the District and provides affordable office space to local groups.
Founded in 1987 by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can has grown from a one-day, twelve-hour music festival to a multi-faceted organization that includes a touring and recording ensemble (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), a commissioning program, a professional development/music institute for composers, conductors and performers, recording and Internet projects and other programs that bring cutting-edge music to a wide audience.
Launched in 1981, BOMB Magazine, aka New Art Publications, is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that publishes interviews and essays in which emerging and established artists can speak openly about their work. BOMB's interviews are primary documents of American cultural history, with an archive of over 800 conversations between artists, writers, architects, directors, and musicians. The magazine aims to reveal, intimately and intellectually, the artist's creative process through in-depth conversation between peers.
Cool Culture is dedicated to facilitating low-income families' access to and participation in the cultural life of New York City. The organization reaches over 32,000 families at 368 Head Start and city-funded day care centers and 101 Universal Pre-Kindergarten programs. Through partnerships with 71 of the City's major museums, botanical gardens, and zoos, Cool Culture provides access, information, and support so that low-income parents and their children can take advantage of these remarkable educational resources.
Creative Outlet
Founded in 1994, this Brooklyn-based arts organization, under the artistic direction of Jamel Gaines, trains professional artists, produces new multimedia works, and tours internationally. Creative Outlet runs a nationally recognized Cultural Arts Program for Young Artists, and also conducts in-school Arts in Education workshops and residencies. Creative Outlet acts as a vehicle for artists and the community to experience art that nurtures their physical, mental, and spiritual well being.
Evidence, A Dance Company
Under the artistic leadership of Brooklyn native and choreographer Ronald K. Brown, Evidence, A Dance Company focuses on the seamless fusion of traditional African dance, modern, ballet and hip-hop dance styles. Founded in 1985, the company's mission is to promote understanding of the human experience in the African Diaspora and to provide sensory connections to history and tradition through music, movement, and spoken word.
Franklin Furnace
Founded in 1976 by artist Martha Wilson, Franklin Furnace's mission is to present, preserve, interpret, proselytize and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content. During its 20th anniversary season, Franklin Furnace reinvented itself as a "virtual institution," not identified with its real estate but rather with its resources, made accessible by electronic and other means.
The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporian Art (MoCADA) is Brooklyn's first and only African American/Diasporian museum. It is committed to increasing public awareness of the art and culture of the African Diaspora as it relates to contemporary issues through innovative exhibitions, public programs, interactive tours for school groups and families, and community outreach initiatives.
New York Writers Coalition (NYWC) creates opportunities to be heard, through the art of writing, for formerly voiceless members of society. NYWC provides free, unique and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk youth, the homeless and formerly homeless, the formerly incarcerated, seniors and others.
Scenarios USA is a non-profit organization that uses writing and filmmaking to foster youth leadership, advocacy and self-expression in under-served teens. Scenarios USA asks young people to write about the issues that shape their lives for the annual "What's the REAL DEAL?" writing contest, and the winning writers are partnered with some of Hollywood's finest filmmakers to transform their stories into award-winning short films watched by over 15 million people a year.
Story Corps is a national project that instructs and inspires people to record each other's stories in sound. Participants can interview their friends, loved ones, or anyone whose story they wish to hear and preserve. Anyone can make history in two StoryBooth locations in Manhattan, and in MobileBooths located around the country. Those who take part in the project receive a CD of the recording, which is also archived at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Selected excerpts are played on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.
WITNESS uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. They empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change. Over the past decade, WITNESS has partnered with groups in more than 70 countries, bringing often unseen images and seldom heard voices to the attention of key decision makers, the media, and the general public -- catalyzing grassroots activism, political engagement, and lasting change
Tenants of South Oxford Space
The following arts and culture organizations are current tenants of South Oxford Space, located at 138 South Oxford Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
ActNow Foundation is a theatre and film company, which focuses on the minority experience in this country. By providing a home for ethnically and racially diverse artists, they take audiences on a journey that enriches their cultural background.
American Opera Projects produces contemporary American operas and commissions new work.
American Theatre of Harlem provides affordable, quality theatre and workshops for actors of all levels.
Andhow! Theater Company is a community of artists who re-examine the process of theater-making and the product of theater storytelling. Productions create fantastic worlds whose elements are drawn from a variety of influences.
Caribbean Cultural Theater produces work reflective of the diverse cultures of the Caribbean and presents a balanced reality of the Caribbean-American experience.
Elders Share the Arts is dedicated to conducting and fostering the development of programs that honor and actively draw on the life experience of older adults and encourage their creative expression.
Elevator Repair Service Theater, formed in 1991, is a critically acclaimed ensemble creating original performance pieces based on and around found texts, found objects, literature and history.
Encompass New Opera Theater produces new music theater pieces and contemporary operas.
Inneract Productions develops and produces the work of artists of color.
Lone Wolf Tribe is a puppet theater ensemble composed of Kevin Augustine and his tribe of exquisitely grotesque puppets. Productions are emotional, visual, brutal, and poetic -- touching the heart as well as breaking it sometimes.
New York Deaf Theater, Ltd. was established in 1979 to create opportunities for the production of plays in American Sign Language for all audiences.
Nia Theatrical Production Company produces new works by emerging artists and provides arts in education programs to the educational community.
Page 73 Productions develops and produces the works of early-career playwrights who have shown professional commitment to the theater but who have received neither wide public recognition nor substantial production opportunities.
Ripe Time develops and produces ensemble-based performances that navigate the terrain between dance and theater, word and image. Work ranges from original text collaborations, to adaptations from non-theatrical sources to re-inventions of classic texts.
Shadow Box Theater is a children's company that uses traditional Chinese shadow puppets to tell folk tales from many cultures or topic driven work such as The Earth and Me which considers environmental issues.
Target Margin Theater is an Obie-award winning experimental company that reinterprets the classics.
Trilok Fusion Arts is a multi-disciplined company providing a forum for artists around the world to collaborate and create new and unique art with a focus on culture and tradition.
Urban Bush Women is an ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change, it synthesizes contemporary dance, music and text with the history, culture and spiritual traditions of African-Americans and the African diaspora.
White Bird Productions works with playwrights, composers and performers to develop and produce theater that embraces issues of the environment and community. The Creative Theatrics program offers theatre projects for pre-K through teens.
The Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York (A.R.T./New York) is the service and advocacy organization for New York City's not-for-profit theaters. It provides 350 member organizations with a variety of services including technical assistance workshops, low-interest loans, cash grants and affordable office space at South Oxford Space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and the Spaces at 520 in Midtown Manhattan.