Below is a sampling of arts and cultural organizations in the BAM Cultural District.
Since its founding in 1988, 651 ARTS has been committed to developing, producing and presenting performing arts and cultural programming grounded in the African Diaspora, with a primary focus on contemporary performing arts. 651 ARTS serves the cultural life of New York City, with a particular focus on Brooklyn, one of America's most culturally diverse communities.
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. Its South Oxford Space in the Cultural District houses twenty-two performing arts organizations.
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.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has grown into a thriving urban arts center that brings international performing arts and film to Brooklyn. BAM's current programming consists of the Next Wave Festival each fall; a spring season of international opera, theater, and dance; a comprehensive Education & Humanities program, and a variety of community programs.
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.
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.
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 Irondale Ensemble Project has had a rich, 25-year history of producing and teaching experimental theater with a strong voice for social change. Located on the corner of Lafayette Avenue and South Oxford Street, the Irondale Center for Theater, Education and Outreach opened in October 2008 at its new home in the former Sunday school space in the historic Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. The new, 7,300 square foot space features a performance space that offers flexible seating for up to 160 people -- the first new performance space in the BAM Cultural District.
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.
MoCADA/The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts is devoted to creating innovative exhibitions which serve as a medium to address, discuss, debate and resolve contemporary social, political and economic issues that disproportionately affect the people of the African Diaspora.
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.
Founded in 1984 by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women (UBW) is a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. UBW weaves contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of African Americans and the African Diaspora, exploring the transformation of struggle and suffering into the bittersweet joy of survival.
UrbanGlass is a not-for-profit international center that promotes the use and appreciation of glass as a creative medium and makes glass accessible to an increasingly diverse audience through its programs, educational initiatives, and publications.
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.
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