In February 2008 the Jamestown Arts Center launched a Capital Campaign to purchase and renovate the property at 18 Valley Street into a beautiful arts center designed by Estes/Twombly Architects. The property was purchased on December 21, 2009, with support from many contributors, and with the help of two generous private loans.

2010 was an incredible year for the JAC. Our fundraising was hugely successful, and we met our December deadline! Community partnerships were formed, art classes were taught at the Jamestown Gallery and our first, annual community fundraiser, pARTy NOW, was truly memorable!

The Jamestown Arts Center is now open and bringing creative programming to the community.

This would not have been possible without the incredible generosity of hundreds of individuals and over a dozen foundations. Special acknowledgement must go to Tom and Joanie Swift who provided substantial financial support for this project as well as to Billy and May Munger, the former owners of 18 Valley Street.

The Jamestown Arts Center is:

A permanent home for our vibrant arts community.
Our arts center is outfitted for performances, exhibitions, and education. It is a place where people meet, share and come to inspire and be inspired. The JAC is a place where artists and art lovers of all levels and interests can enjoy self expression and self fulfillment. We coordinate programming with schools, community centers and other arts organizations to optimize opportunities for interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaborations. The Jamestown Arts Center is a hub for all things ART!

A connection to our state’s creative industries.
The Jamestown Arts Center connects our local arts community to other communities across the state and beyond. The arts center encourages a statewide draw, benefiting local businesses and tourism. We offer employment, internships, and job training for a variety of jobs and careers in the art and design world. The Arts are the fastest growing sector of Rhode Island’s economy and are vital to our collective success.

The synergy between art and innovation.
Art is a never-ending learning experience. Practicing any form of art, at any age, in any capacity activates a range of human intelligence to accomplish something of value. Our dynamic brains work in an amazing concert of imagination, experimentation and skills acquisition, as we learn to generate new ideas. When we have the opportunity to work collaboratively our artistic interaction maximizes creativity. By encouraging the thinking processes that rely on variety and curiosity, Art stimulates creative minds to reach outside accepted ideas to seek new solutions.

Creative thinking in the 21st Century:
Learning to think creatively is crucial to the strength of our society and to the health of our planet. Our economy is no longer based on the industrial model of the 18th and early 19th centuries, but on technology and design driven solutions. However, these changes are not reflected in our public schools, whose arts programs are in fact sacrificed to improve school budgets. The benefits of an interdisciplinary curriculum are unknown to most young people, as students learn subjects often as segregated and narrow as tasks in a factory.