The arts are fundamental to our communal, daily existence. They allow us to model the foundational skills we use to relate to and show up for each other. Asheville Creative Arts produces high quality theatre, performance, and arts experiences for audiences of all ages in the Western North Carolina region, which are developed with the context of our community at the forefront. Our work aims to start conversations about the biggest problems we all face and look toward collaborative solutions.
Our belief in art as a building block for community drives us to provide artists with access to professional development and resources that support creative practice, as well as opportunities to create and share work with the public. Alongside artists, it is important to us to provide tools and infrastructure that allow community leaders to do their best work in service of Asheville’s audiences and community members.
ACA’s employees and collaborators have strong ties to the Asheville area and care deeply about the vitality of the region. We use theatre to reflect and elevate the communities we represent and serve, which can only be accomplished when we are meaningfully involved in these communities. As such, creating and maintaining long-lasting relationships with individuals and organizations within our community is a significant part of the work that ACA does.
We have seen firsthand how important these connections are, and how strong networks of support within the community have made it possible to respond quickly to needs as they arise. ACA’s founder and director, Abby Felder, comes from a background in theatre, nonprofit administration, and finance. She has a unique understanding of the challenges that small, grassroots, community-based organizations face when seeking funding for their projects—particularly those which do not necessarily fit neatly within the existing institutional practices of the nonprofit sector.
Given the organizational knowledge that Asheville Creative Arts holds, it is only fitting for us to act as a fiscal sponsor for values-aligned groups. At the most basic level, a 501c3 nonprofit organization can lend its status to smaller programs and initiatives in order to provide access to funding and resources. The recipients of these benefits are frequently grassroots organizations which do not have the means to go through the often demanding and lengthy process of applying for 501c3 nonprofit status. Sponsor relationships can take many forms, varying in degrees of involvement and oversight. Asheville Creative Arts’ goal as a fiscal sponsor is to serve as a true partner, honoring the unique needs and desires of each organization we work with. This means operating on a foundation of trust, meeting our partners where they are, and maintaining continuous communication throughout the process.
We value staying connected with one another and strengthening our communal bonds; we want our partnerships to continue if and when sponsored organizations obtain their own 501c3 status. Asheville Creative Arts can and has aided in such a transition with great success: we have been supporting and working alongside Hood Huggers International for more than five years, initially acting as their fiscal sponsor and establishing practices which allowed the organization to build capacity. Hood Huggers is now operating as their own nonprofit, and we are thrilled to be partnering with them on the creation of Blue Note Junction, a community space committed to reinvesting profits back into BIPOC neighborhoods and endeavors in Asheville. Blue Note Junction will include spaces which support jobs and workforce development, affordable housing, growing local businesses and makers, and community-focused art. It will function as a cultural hub with a focus on environmental sustainability and community-led revitalization in the historic Burton Street neighborhood.
Asheville Creative Arts looks forward to producing new work in Blue Note Junction’s indoor and outdoor performance spaces, while also continuing to bring productions into other parts of the Asheville community. Many of our shows are easily adapted to a variety of spaces, allowing us to meet our audiences where they are. We know that everyone learns in different ways and responds better to different environments, so we aim to cultivate an atmosphere in which everyone can feel comfortable and ready to engage.
Using art and theatre as tools for expression, Asheville Creative Arts seeks to inspire audiences and participants to apply creative decision-making skills to all aspects of life. By working together to tell stories, we model and practice social responsibility and connectivity. As an organization and collective, we are intimately familiar with the artistic rehearsal process. Our hope is that through engaging with our community on multiple levels, we are also rehearsing for a gentler and more inclusive world.
BUILDERS, our mainstage show created by Federica Collina for ACA’s 10th anniversary season, looks directly at what it takes to build that world: through humor and play, the storytellers and puppets invite children to imagine how small acts of kindness and cooperation can create a community where everyone has a place. Commissioned by Buncombe County employees looking to engage young people in long term hurricane recovery efforts, BUILDERS uses allegory and simple concepts to demonstrate and encourage civic engagement.
Recent performances of BUILDERS have been staged at the Resilience Hub in Swannanoa and at several area schools (W.D. Williams, ArtSpace), where discussions following the show have involved questions developed in collaboration with the county to collect feedback and input for the Swannanoa Small Area Plan. Celebrating empathy and teamwork, BUILDERS reveals the message that underscores Asheville Creative Arts’ mission: the strongest things are built when we listen, share, and work together, acknowledging the invisible threads that connect us all. By creating the show in partnership with the county and bringing it to the community, ACA is practicing and modeling working together across a variety of organizations: for-profit, non-profit, civic, and educational.
As we continue to bring BUILDERS to spaces in and around Buncombe County, ACA is also developing our next production with the goal of maintaining our values of addressing community issues while partnering with community members and organizations. The as-yet-to-be-titled show is inspired by the life and work of Black Mountain College alumna, Ruth Asawa. Asawa was sent to a Japanese internment camp during World War II at the age of 16 – an experience which led her to develop a robust creative practice in order to negate the dehumanization of incarceration. In this performance piece, her work will be explored alongside pioneering artists Augusta Savage and Amalia Mesa-Bains in order to show a lineage of creative resistance to patriarchal structures that use hierarchy and domination as a means of violent control. While looking at the past, audiences will explore how creativity and wonder can be employed to counter the modern-day expression of these systems, including incarceration of children at ICE facilities and juvenile detention centers, and AI.
As with ACA’s past work, the show will provide a highly interactive environment in which a difficult topic can be broken down in digestible ways, ultimately emphasizing how resilience can be surfaced and fortified through creative practice. These ideas will be reinforced by post-show conversations which will include an invitation for action, as well as highlighting local groups, resources, and volunteer opportunities. The meaningful change we aim to bring about with this project will look like shifts in perspective, generative conversations, and increased engagement with the issues addressed.
The development process for an Asheville Creative Arts show is as filled with collaboration, discovery, and play as the final product, and we are excited for the opportunity to delve more deeply into these aspects of our communal experience.