The Umbrella Arts Center: a multidisciplinary arts-music-theater facility around the corner from Concord’s downtown.

It’s just a few minutes’ walk from the compact downtown center of Concord. Just a short walk onto Stow Street, from Main Street, the century-old building stands with a simple identifying sign in front. Visitors enter an impressive foyer that opens into an art gallery space. And that is only a taste of what is to be found here.

“This was the 1929 Emerson School building,” says Stewart Ikeda, Director of Public Relations and Strategic Partnerships. “As the school population grew, eventually the town built another school and this fell into disuse.”

In 1983, a group of artists made a proposal to the town to use the empty school as a site for artists’ studios. The artists would be responsible for building maintenance and upkeep; in return, the town would maintain ownership of the property for a low annual rent. By 1985, now as an organized non-profit organization, the artists had moved in and begun the process of cleaning and fixing up the interior spaces and turning the classrooms and other areas into studios, a theater, and a dance studio. The annual spring Open Studios, an opportunity for the public at large to see the artist workspaces, started around this time.

“They started having workshops, and there were some performing arts,” says Ikeda, “Children’s Concord Youth Theater used to work out of this space. Over time they developed a very successful community theater program here that was known for putting on high quality productions, but in a famously uncomfortable theater space.”

As the years went on, and Umbrella Arts continued to grow and expand their successful and popular programs, it was determined that a capital campaign was necessary to raise funds for a major renovation of the building. OMR Architects, of West Acton, was hired to design the new interior space as well an addition at the rear.

The capital campaign raised $25 million, which allowed the construction project to begin work in 2017. Two years of work, including making the building more accessible and more eco-friendly — two aspects that were not considerations in 1929 construction — yielded the incredible facility that is The Umbrella Arts Center today.

“In the fall of 2019, in October,” says Ikeda, “we reopened with a big red carpet concert that was headlined by Lyle Lovett with a surprise appearance by Steve Miller. And that was the same period in which our performing arts program became a professional stage company. We launched the Umbrella Stage Company at that time with a big musical, 42nd Street, on the brand-new main stage.”

There are two theaters that support varying stage productions, music concerts, and film screenings: the 344-seat main stage and the 100-seat black box theater. Contiguous to the main stage are a green room for the talent and an orchestra pit room linked to the stage via a video connection (rather than the more traditional open pit at the front lip of the stage). The black box theater, a level above, is a small, intimate space ideal for smaller productions.

Performing arts education is vital to the Center’s mission. “We have a performing arts camp for youth in the summer,:” Stewart Ikeda explains. “We've even had some adult acting classes at various times. We also host a film series here. Both of our theaters are equipped for film projections. So, we have a monthly series with the Concord Film Project that has an optional pre-show catered dinner right down in the art gallery.”

Elaborating on the arts education program and the facilities at Umbrella Arts Center, Ikeda continues: “We had gotten a grant from Mass Development to outfit the space with all kinds of fabrication equipment — a digital lab, a fabrication lab, 3D printing, laser cutters, CNC routers, a beautiful workshop. Too, our ceramics program has always been popular, and that was completely redesigned from the ground up for both ergonomics and safety and to meet the demand. We've since had a second expansion of ceramics post-pandemic. It sells out within a day of opening up for registration.”

“[The program] is all-age,” Ikeda  says “Our arts education program now serves everyone from toddler age through advanced independent artists. We have an independent artist program for ceramics. People can just come in on a monthly membership basis and use the equipment. But we also have clay-bees, like mommy and me, daddy and me, caretaker and me; classes for toddlers. We have a very successful summer arts camp, as well as school vacation-week programs. The families in the area really get to know us, and [the programs] usually sell out within the day of opening. We do everything: painting, fiber arts, woodwork, metalwork, glasswork, acrylic painting and oil painting, watercolors, drawing, quilting. We also have dance classes. And some other offerings might be digital photography, animation in our digital lab space.”

From the very beginning, the Umbrella Arts Center has been known as a home to local area artists of all disciplines. There is rental studio space for artists within the facility. According to the website, Umbrella Arts Center is “… home to more than 50 working artists skilled in a variety of fine and applied arts including ceramics, glass, fiber arts, jewelry making, illustration, mixed-media, painting, photography, printmaking, illustration, sculpture, woodworking, writing and more.  Since the organization's founding, artists have been at the heart of making this facility a community asset and wellspring of creative activity.”

Stewart Ikeda: “[Though] most of the studio artists rent the space, we have a couple of studios that are reserved for an Artist-in-Residence program. We've had one, two, three artists-in-residence rotating at any given time. At this writing, the program   has two such artists. The Fall 2024 Artist-in-Residence is a Somerville-based artist, Shima Taj Bakhsh, interested in the various architectural intersections in her native Iran. The 2024-2025 Ceramics Artist-in-Residence is renowned artist and teacher Kyle Johns.

A notable aspect of the Center is the ample amount of exhibition space accessible to everyone who visits. No matter where a visitor walks through the building, on all three floors, there is art in all forms hanging on the walls — paintings, prints, photographs, drawings —  their version of an art museum.

The third floor is used as a “flexible temporary space for internal use by our Studio artists,” according to Stewart Ikeda. The second floor, which also serves as the lobby for the two theaters, is known as the Wedge Gallery.

The first floor, the major exhibition space just beyond the front foyer, is the Allie Kussin Gallery, named for the then-president of the Board of Directors who passed away during the renovation project. The current exhibition, The Alchemy of a Life: Selected Works by Thorpe Feidt, features the artist’s life’s work. Thorpe Feidt, who passed away at age 83 on April 4, 2024, was a professor at the Montserrat College of Art for 37 years. He was known as an “actor in local theater companies, an author, a mentor, [and an] avid lover of jazz.”

The last word on this formidable space comes from Stewart Ikeda: “We … have the studio artists continually rotating their work outside their studios, because we really wanted it to be like you're walking through three floors of an art museum. So you're always seeing different work when you come back, too, for classes and so forth. We continue to have Open Studios in the spring, and we have a robust three-day Winter Market  where we invite not only our studio artists, but several regional artists and artisans from throughout Greater Boston to come in here and make a festive holiday market. That's always the first weekend of December.”

“An important thing about the Umbrella's redesign was that we had this concept of wanting to be Concord's living room,” Ikeda concludes. “We're almost always open, even on weekends, and the art galleries are open. We're not ticketed, you know, you don't have to pay a fee or anything, you just come in when you're in town for foliage season. You can always come here, get free wi-fi, sit in the gallery, enjoy the art. That was important to us in the design. And I think you'll see through the furnishings and things, it's a comfortable place to visit.”

            And more than worth the short walk from the downtown.

The Umbrella Arts Center 

40 Stow Street 
Concord, Mass. 

For more information, 
Website: theumbrellaarts.org