Flower City Arts Center

Mission

Flower City Arts Center is a community-based not-for-profit organization that educates, encourages, and inspires all people to create and enjoy the visual arts, design, and media. We embrace the fact that the arts elevate humanity, are naturally therapeutic, and provide tools for expression in the language of the heart in a world that needs healing. Flower City Arts Center strives to create social change through arts, education, and creative entrepreneurship. We provide high-quality arts programs to the most in-need people in our community.

History

The Flower City Arts Center celebrated 50 years in 2020. Established in 1970, The Flower City Arts Center is housed in a historic firehouse constructed in 1895-1905. We are the only community visual arts center conveniently located within the City of Rochester. In 1974, the Arts Center was incorporated as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit educational institution. In addition to our staff and board, we have up to 20 artists-in-residence and many instructors, studio artists, volunteers, and interns.

What We Do: Art for All People!

We offer foundational arts in Printmaking & Book Arts (PABA) using vintage presses, letter sets, and traditional ink printing methods; bookbinding, papermaking, marbling, and calligraphy; Fine Arts like painting, drawing, mixed media art, and encaustics; Ceramics, using hand building, wheels, and kilns, and Photography offering a darkroom, professional lighting studio, cyanotype “silver den”, and more. This blends with modern tools, such as Digital Media through computer design, photography, videography, editing, digital and audio production, animation, music production, and risograph printing.

Flower City Arts Center serves young children all the way up to the oldest community members throughout Rochester and the wider region. We have youth programs, such as Studio 678 Photo & Writing Club for city middle school (6th, 7th, and 8th grade) students, the oldest youth arts program in the Rochester area celebrating 25 years, and Expanding The Field (ETF), career and college arts for urban high school students (grades 9-12). These programs serve low-income young people of color who often fall through the cracks or are at-risk from trauma and other life and family challenges.

Additionally, Flower City Arts Center runs specialized classes and inclusive programs for a wide array of people with varying physical and mental abilities. In recognition of our LGBTQIA+ community members and their allies, we are part of the Safe Space Alliance. We host diverse Artists-in-Residence all year and offer creative healing and therapeutic arts, studio space rental, three galleries with rotating public exhibits, workshops, lectures, classes, entrepreneurial projects, and memberships for the Greater Rochester Area. There are even international shows, such as our widely attended four-day Flower City Pottery Invitational, which invites potters and curators from around the country and the world.

Ongoing Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At the Flower City Art Center, we value and cultivate an environment composed of a variety of backgrounds, skills, and views. We believe that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion provide a platform for ongoing innovation in art education and acknowledge the importance of diverse representation in the field of visual arts. We are a community that encourages all people to be respected, valued, included, and free to be one’s authentic selves. We are committed to Art for All People.

The Flower City Arts Center is an Institutional Member of the National Guild for Community Arts Education.

State Funding Disclosure

Flower City Arts Center's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.