Waterfall Arts

Waterfall Arts is highly respected as the most comprehensive community arts center in Midcoast, Maine. Waterfall Arts offers resources to students, professionals, and arts enthusiasts of all ages, including art classes, exhibitions, events, performances, open media-specific studios (clay, print, and photography), free and low cost after school art programs, public art projects, long-term studio space to artists and teachers, and short-term rental facilities to artists, performers, and other organizations.

Waterfall Arts was founded in 2000 as the Arts Center at Kingdom Falls on an expansive 11 acre rustic site in Montville, Maine. The founders and area artists came together to offer local arts experiences for all ages and skill levels inspired by the natural beauty of the woods, streams, ponds, and waterfalls on site. In 2005, the Mayor and City Council of Belfast, looking to re-purpose its 1935 Anderson Elementary School, encouraged Waterfall Arts to expand from Montville and establish a year-round arts center in downtown Belfast. Today, Waterfall Arts is a vibrant, nonprofit, community art venue committed to its mission “to create community in harmony with nature through the transformative power of the arts.”

Waterfall Arts owns, manages, and maintains its 16,375 sf school building, which comprises a variety of studio and classroom spaces, and develops and runs extensive programming throughout the year, including:

• Exhibitions: Waterfall Arts brings regional and national artists to Belfast throughout the year. Guided by an annual theme, exhibitions offer thousands of visitors exposure to inspiring, often cutting-edge, arts experiences. Exhibitions are accompanied by artist talks, workshops, opening receptions, outreach to area schools, and other exhibition-specific programs.
• Classes, Open Studios, and the Youth & Family Outreach Program (YFO): Classes offered at Waterfall Arts cover a wide variety of media: clay, photography, book arts, sculpture, music, painting, printmaking, fiber arts, and more. Photography, Printmaking, and Clay studios, as well as the Bridge Studio for youth programming, provide tools and workspace to artists both young and old. YFO is a multi-tiered program that provides safe spaces for young artists to connect with themselves, each other, and the community through quality creative experiences, including after school programs, community events, youth exhibitions, and outreach to local schools and youth serving organizations.
• Performances and Film Screenings: Waterfall Arts presents performance-based artists, dancers, musicians and theater groups, and screens independent films in concert with its mission. Concerts and performances have featured nationally touring acts such as the What Cheer? Brigade and Bread & Puppet Theater. Waterfall Arts has also regularly hosted the All Roads Music Festival (formerly the Free Range Music Festival), the Seal Bay Music Festival, the Belfast Poetry Festival, as well as many shows of local and regional acts.