About
Welcome to Umbrella Arts!
OUR MISSION
The Umbrella Arts Center is an interdisciplinary creative hub where artists, learners, and audiences can connect, innovate, and thrive.
Through welcoming spaces, cultural conversations, and opportunities for artistic expression and skill development, we support artists at every stage of their journey, strengthen communities, enrich lives, and shape the future through the arts.
COMMITTMENT TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY, INCLUSION, AND ACCESS
The Umbrella proactively promotes equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility (EDI+A) in the organization and through posted policies, contracts, and ongoing programming, advocacy, training, and planning. The Umbrella welcomes and respects constituents regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, race, religion, philosophical or political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, nationality, geographic origin, immigration status, and socio-economic status. The Umbrella does not discriminate or discourage participation on the basis of race, gender, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, sexual orientation or age.
The Umbrella Arts Center is committed to being a place where art is genuinely for everyone; where disabled artists, audiences, students, staff, and visitors can participate fully and equitably, not as an accommodation granted after the fact but as a condition we design from the start. Accessibility at The Umbrella is not a one-time project or a box to check. It is ongoing work, embedded in our Strategic Plan. For any questions or to request an accomodation, please reach out to our Access Coordinator.
The Umbrella has adopted Mass Cultural Council principles for Universal Participation, committing to ongoing best practices for expanding access to our programs. The Umbrella is proud to be named an MCC UP Designated Organization. We continue to broaden accessibility of classes, workshops and ticketed performances through Card-to-Culture programs, scholarships, sliding-scale fees, school outreach, and additional efforts.
Consistent with our mission-driven commitment to serve the needs of our widening, increasingly diverse regional constituencies, the Board and Staff of The Umbrella Arts Center resolve to proactively pursue strategies to: foster an increasingly vibrant, diverse, inclusive, and accessible creative community, leadership structure and working environment; promote cultural exchange and opportunities to engage with culturally diverse artwork and perspectives; provide leadership in our local community as an advocate for cultural equity and social justice; and conduct ongoing audits of our mission, vision, facilities, recruitment practices, and strategic planning to identify opportunities to expand equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility at every level of the organization.
Related to our mission of enriching lives and building a vibrant, inclusive community through the arts we would like to acknowledge that the land we use for classes and events and the land on which The Umbrella is built is on the Musketaquid area, original homelands of the Nipmuc and Massachusett peoples. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory, and we honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land on which we gather.
WHAT WE OFFER
• Studio space for more than 50 artists
• Gallery exhibition spaces
• Community arts initiatives and outdoor art installations
• Classes and workshops for all ages, and in partnership with schools throughout our extended community
• Creative arts summer camps and vacation week programs for youth
• Performance space for all disciplines in two theaters -- a state-of-the-art 344-seat main stage theater and 100-seat black box theater, as well as a dance studio classroom
• Space rentals for private events
• Ceramics facilities, firing services, and instruction for students and independent artists
OUR HISTORY
Built as a high school in 1929 and the town’s first steel-beamed structure, Emerson School has long been an important historic and architectural landmark in downtown Concord. The building served as a public school for more than five decades before it was deemed obsolete and insufficient for a growing student population. In the early 1980s, a group of Concord volunteers and visionaries realized that the aging Emerson School building, slated for demolition, could be saved and converted into a community arts center. So, in 1982, The Umbrella’s founders obtained tax-exempt status as a private non-profit organization and developed a detailed multi-use proposal for the building, which the Board of Selectmen approved in 1983. This agreement retains the spirit of the original deed, which states that the land will be used for education, and is still in place today. The Town of Concord retains ownership of the building, which it leases to The Umbrella Arts Center, which in turn is responsible for programming, operating, building maintenance, and capital improvement costs. The Umbrella, Inc. is a qualified 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Audited financials statements and Federal Form 990s are available upon request.
OTHER INFORMATION
