Our Impact
The Alcott Neighborhood started the arts center to save and restore the old Alcott grade school building as well as make a positive impact on area children and adults alike - inner city people who wanted an artistic leg up. We are in need of helpful people to step up and help the Alcott grow, renovate our historic landmark, and bring more artistic opportunities to everyone!
Alcott is at a point of change for the better. The organization has developed a great program of arts for the last twenty years - now let’s look forward to the next twenty!
Children’s art classes and gallery shows
Alcott’s annual Shakespeare in the Parking Lot theater production
Students of the Alcott Grade School building
We are formally known as the L. M. Alcott Art Center Foundation and we are an all Volunteer organization. For the last 21 years the LMAACF has offered Incubation space for developing performance groups, Theatrical Productions, Art Exhibitions, Art Classes of many different types and several forms of theatrical training. We have provided opportunities for first time directors to direct semi-professional plays, allowing a nurturing environment for incubation of developing associate member groups that use the Alcott facilities for rehearsal space, theatre productions and fundraisers.
The Foundation’s goal is to provide Artistic opportunities. This has proven to be something we do very well. The facility has seen participation of artists from a larger than anticipated geographical area. Turning into a regional Arts environment within the first two years of our twenty year stint. People really love the old school feel, tall ceilings, wood floors and steam radiators. Some have likened the rehearsal space and Art Galleries to New York style studios.
Alcott functions under the “Everything Positive-Nothing Negative” Motto. We have never depended on grants ( but have greatly appreciated the ones that we have received) to sustain our existence and have to look to the positive things in order to persevere to provide programming and events that uplift others.
The L.M. Alcott Art Center or Alcott Arts Center as most know us was started in an effort to save a neighborhood school from becoming a minimum-security prison in 1999 in our mostly residential area. At the time our area was troubled with old abandoned truck stop buildings across the street from our school building and a less than desirable motel that rented rooms by the hour.
But our community needed some hope! The founders (a group of local neighbors who lived close to the building and some other local business people) were given an opportunity to help create a positive environment in our own neighborhood. The Board of Education agreed to sell the building to an area NBR. This group had the building a little over a year when the original neighborhood people who petitioned the BOE to stop the sell to the prison were called upon to come back and help define a direction for this historic ole school building. Our building first opened in 1923 as the Louisa May Alcott Grade School, serving the Kansas City, Kansas public school system in that capacity until 1976.
We joined in and organized a fact finding committee to make sure that what ever was in the school would be something positive and that it would benefit a large variety of people and bring opportunities to the local KCK area, as well as preserve our wonderful old building. Our committee after a few months of searching for the best solution decided on the concept of something different for our area altogether, an Arts Center.
The Alcott Arts Center was designated as an Arts only facility in October of 2001.
The Local NBR in 2002 decided to sell the building to the steering committee (under the condition that the committee became a Not for Profit Organization in Kansas within a thirty day time period starting that day) and move back to their area. The committee filed for a state Not for Profit Incorporation Designation (approved in March of 2002) and has been known formally as the L.M. Alcott Art Center Foundation ever since.
LMAACF Is a non-profit 501(c) (3), 509(a) (2) Public Charity dedicated to the appreciation, understanding, and production of the arts, with an emphasis on exploring and sharing the cultural diversity within our community. Owned and operated by the neighborhood/the L.M. Alcott Art Center Foundation and not by any one person.
We have been in existence now for seventeen years as a self sustaining Arts Foundation. Alcott has awarded grants and scholarships, taught classes in several areas of the Arts, curated over Three Hundred Sixty Five Art Exhibits and produced several plays at the Alcott Arts Center including 10 productions of Alcott's Shakespeare in the Parking Lot Series.
We have partnered with several groups at public functions and have even been involved with national Arts programs including the National Endowment of the Arts' "the Big Read" program.