The Vera Project

$12k for 12 months of All-Ages Programming

2024 has thus far been a banner year for The Vera Project! By year's end we will have hosted 21,181 hours of volunteer shift opportunities; produced 325 concerts between our main home at the Seattle Center and Black Lodge in South Lake Union; kickstarted budding careers for 30 under-25 year olds between our Video Production Lab and Live Production Lab cohorts; led 110 classes and workshops in live sound, lighting, screen printing, lighting design, audio recording, and taxes; facilitated more than 40 rentals with key cultural, civic, and workforce partners; participated in most every major music and cultural festival in the region; and our Ground Zero Radio newsroom actively producing hundreds of pieces while developing new correspondents in Hawaii, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, and the Netherlands.

It is – to be frank – a lot, but is more so a reflection of the immense energy amongst our youth-empowered all-ages community members and where they are leading the future of arts, music, and civic engagement within Seattle and abroad. In honor of this intense generation of activity, we are setting a goal of $12k for 12 months of VERA for this year's Giving Tuesday, capping on December 3rd.

DONATE TO SUSTAIN VERA's MASSIVE 2024

Mission

The Vera Project is an all-ages nonprofit space dedicated to fostering personal and community transformation through collaborative, youth-driven engagement in music and art. A music venue, screen print shop, recording studio, art gallery, and safe space for radical self-expression, VERA is a home to Seattle's creative community.

Description

The Vera Project is an all-ages, volunteer-driven music and arts center dedicated to fostering a participatory creative culture for young people and beyond. Founded in 2001 as a response to Seattle's Teen Dance Ordinance, VERA has grown from a safe space for all people to experience music and art performance into a vital community center that provides countless young people with world class concerts and gallery showings, creative workforce development and experiential learning opportunities, and alternative work positions, along with training in live and recorded sound engineering, event production, screen-printing, community organizing, leadership, and more. Our committee structure allows young community members, primarily aged 14-24, to lead the direction of the entire space and organization with which they are also participating, creating an intergenerational, collaborative arts community connected by shared creative and professional passions.

VERA's core programming and cultural offerings annually include hosting over 200 music concerts in our main showroom, gallery, and Black Lodge stages; Ground Zero Radio newsroom; 12 visual art gallery showings; community-curated stages at multiple outdoor music festivals in Seattle; 50 live and recorded audio engineering and production classes; 50 screen-printing classes, lighting and security workshops; dedicated internships in the arts; one-hundred open sessions (free time for community members to work on projects) in our screen-printing and recording studios; and leadership training through our programmatic and steering committees. All of our shows, classes, and sessions are all-ages, affordable, substance-free, youth-led but multigenerational, and staffed by community members that have been trained or are currently training in the space. VERA also offers direct scholarships to lower income youth and never turns a single person away from a show or class for lack of funds.