On July 20, 2022, SouthEast Effective Development (SEED) and SEEDArts will celebrate Rainier Arts Center’s 100th birthday! The event includes an ADEFUA cultural education workshop and musical duo Ben Hunter & Joe Seamons, followed by hors d’oeuvres from Chef Tarik Abdullah of Feed The People. The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited, so anyone interested in attending should register on their Eventbrite page.
The Rainier Arts Center was originally home to the Fifth Church of Christ the Scientist and was built in 1922. The building sat empty for many years and was purchased by SEED in 1995. After renovation, it opened in 1997 as the first multicultural show. arts center in southeast Seattle. It was originally called the Rainier Valley Cultural Center from 1989 to 2016. In 2016, SEED renamed it the Rainier Center for the Arts.
“SEED really bought the building at the urging of the community,” SEEDArts director Kathy Fowells told the South Seattle Emerald.
SEED is a non-profit organization founded in 1975, with SEEDArts as a unit dedicated to the arts, affordable housing and economic development. SEEDArts has five core programs, including Rainier Arts Center, Columbia City Gallery, radio station KVRU 105.7, affordable SEEDArts studios, and Columbia Hillman Arts & Cultural District as SEEDArts Public and Community Arts.
The Rainier Center for the Arts has become a major community resource and has hosted events such as the Ethiopian Cultural Arts Festival, Vietnam’s Remember Saigon Festival, and the Odunde Festival. In 2019, the Center launched the Anchor Partner Program, which provides an affordable home base for grassroots arts and cultural organizations that lacked their own space or were displaced.
“[Anchor partners] pay a low monthly fee to be an anchor partner and then they can use the center for all their meetings and rehearsals and events and classes,” Fowells said. “I just love the Anchor Partners program because it allowed us to really activate this space, especially during the downtime between rental events, but more importantly, it gave those organizations that couldn’t afford their own space a home base.”
Current anchor partners are ADEFUA Cultural Education Workshop, Seattle’s King County Khmer Community, and Wasat.
The building was also renovated in 2020-2021. Major upgrades include a large curtain, an upgraded sound system and a green room. Even the renovations to the building were done with community input in mind, according to Fowell.
“The whole reason we bought and renovated the arts center was because so many people in the community and the organization said, ‘Hey, this iconic building in the neighborhood, it has to serve the community,'” Fowell said. “We listen to the community … Like many groups said, “We can’t use that room because there’s no backstage.” So we renovated the lower floor and built a green space. I think, you know, for a facility to serve the community, it has to take direction from the community.
The 100th birthday refers not only to the building’s status as the Rainier Center for the Arts, but also to the fact that it has been a community-based facility for 100 years. The building is a landmark in the area, located in front of Columbia Park, one of the most important green spaces in Southeast Seattle.
“It’s really the fact that the facility is in a neighborhood [that’s] what makes it so special,” Fowells said. “One of the focuses of my work is to make sure that artists and arts and cultural organizations have a space in their new neighborhood to do their work … to make a profit from their work and at the same time enrich the community by bringing these events right into the heart of the neighborhood. It removes a lot of barriers.”
As Southeast Seattle struggles with gentrification and displacement, art spaces are often undervalued and some are the first to be displaced. For 25 years, the Rainier Center for the Arts has provided a home for the arts in the community, lest the art spaces be forgotten. Nevertheless, the threat of displacement remains a problem in the region.
“It’s even more heartbreaking because it’s the most diverse community in the city, and when you see this rapid development coming into the neighborhood, I see more and more artists and arts organizations being pushed out,” Fowells said. “I’m afraid because there are no more people in the South that you can push. If we push them out of Rainier Valley, they’ll go to Renton, Kent, Federal Way. And the city of Seattle is going to lose its creative heart and soul.
According to Fowells, there is a small window to make sure we invest in facilities and infrastructure to support the creative economy in Southeast Seattle. The Rainier Center for the Arts is a vital facility within this window, making the building’s 100th birthday celebration even more important.
“We really wanted to throw a party, just to thank everyone for coming along,” Fowells said. “And to give the community an opportunity to come and say, ‘Wow, look at this, this place has really changed a lot in the last couple of years.'”
Celebrate Rainier Center for the Arts’ 100th birthday with SEED and SEEDArts on Tuesday, July 20 from 5:00-8:30 p.m. at the Rainier Center for the Arts at 8515 South Alaska St. RSVP to the event via the Eventbrite page.
Rainier Center for the Arts is always looking for community partners and sponsors, volunteers and donors. Contact them through the Rainier Center for the Arts website about opportunities.
Amanda Ong (she) is a Chinese-American writer from California. She is currently a master’s candidate in the museology program at the University of Washington and graduated from Columbia University in 2020 with a degree in creative writing and ethnicity and race studies.
📸 Featured Image: Tomorrow, July 20, the Rainier Center for the Arts will celebrate its 100th anniversary as a center for culture and communities in Seattle’s South End. (Photo: Kathy Fowells)
