Our Initiative
Imagine a place where artists thrive, creativity flourishes, and the community unites through the power of the arts. Charlotte Center for the Arts is building an accessible and affordable hub in South Charlotte, designed to break down barriers for performers and visual artists.
With dedicated spaces for rehearsals, performances, exhibitions, and education, we are fostering a cultural movement that ensures every artist has a stage and every patron has a seat.
By partnering with developers, city leaders, and passionate supporters, we’re shaping the future of Charlotte’s arts scene—one that is inclusive, vibrant, and transformative. Join us in making this vision a reality—because when the arts thrive, our entire community rises.
Charlotte Center for the Arts is dedicated to creating an accessible and affordable hub that fosters performance, exhibition, and education, breaking down barriers for artists and audiences while building a vibrant, collaborative arts community that positions South Charlotte as a premier cultural destination.
Our Core Values
Art Without Barriers
We champion accessibility, affordability, and inclusivity, ensuring that artists and audiences alike can create, connect, and experience the arts without limitations.
Community-Fueled Creativity
We believe the arts thrive through collaboration, education, and shared experiences, uniting artists, educators, and patrons to inspire and uplift Charlotte’s cultural landscape.
Innovation with Impact
We embrace bold ideas and forward-thinking artistry, fostering a space where creativity flourishes, opportunities expand, and Charlotte becomes a premier destination for the arts.
The greater Charlotte Metro area has experienced unbelievable growth during the course of the past 10-20 years. As our city has become a vibrant hub of activity for banking, business, sports, food, shopping, and so much more; our local Arts communities have struggled to keep pace.
One of the biggest challenges shared by all of the local Arts is a lack of access to space. Despite continued investments in expanding the infrastructure of Charlotte outward from Uptown, we see fewer and fewer spaces available--gallery space for visual artists to display their work, stages for performing artists to showcase their talents, cultural gathering spaces to demonstrate the depth of what our City has to offer.
This need is particularly strong in the South Charlotte area where we have seen unprecedented population growth. We at the Charlotte Center for the Arts envision a space in South Charlotte with performance stages and exhibit space for local and regional artists, where both the artist and the patron feel invited into the space without barriers. This would serve as an Arts and Culture hub that will change the way we imagine the performing and visual arts. A center with rehearsal spaces and classrooms that complement the performing spaces and galleries inside the building, all flowing into an exterior space that would invite in all members of the community.
The City of Charlotte recognizes many of these needs in their Arts and Culture Plan, which was accepted in November 2023. So, in conjunction with the needs expressed by the greater Charlotte community, along with the compelling feedback we have personally received over the last few years from arts organizations and visual artists, we are proposing a plan to engage developers, the City, and artists like you to come together and build a new Center for the Arts in South Charlotte.