STUFFED Arts at Judson Memorial Church, NYC

From 2011 - 2021, STUFFED Arts responded to the needs for accessible performing arts, meals, and education for a hungry community.  

Since its inception, as STUFFED: Dinner + Dance in 2011, STUFFED Arts existed as a platform for free creative expression. Focused on equitable and inclusive community gatherings that nourish the artist, the audience, the body, and the soul, STUFFED Arts’ programs synergised 4 basic human needs all under one roof: food, art, space, community. 

Quarterly events held at Judson Memorial Church in NYC’s Washington Square Park neighborhood, provided home-cooked meals sourced from local restaurants and prepared by a volunteer team. Meals were presented as communal dinners followed by curated dance performances. These free public events served everyone, from the hardened New Yorker to the new transplant, the hungry and cold to the transient tourist. Participating artists were given time to work and explore choreographic ideas in Judson’s iconic sanctuary followed by the opportunity to share their work on a low tech/high visibility performance platform shared between 2-6 artists.

In 2019, D.A.N.C.E (Dancing And Nourishing Community Engagement) was introduced as a program to expand STUFFED Arts, offering low tuition movement classes and an artist in residence opportunities. The program provided pre-professional and professional participants with daily class and rehearsals with D.A.N.C.E Artists in Residence. AIRs were given time, space and a community of dancers with which to develop new creative ideas. The program included daily shared meals, conversations with NYC community arts activists and guests, a final showing, and performance at Dinner + Dance in months following the program.

In the wake of the 2020 global health & humanitarian crisis and the call to reflect and dismantle systems of oppression, racism, and overt monopolies of power in organizations in the United States and abroad, STUFFED Arts implemented programming efforts that aimed to expand its artistic community and give voice to artists within its organization via a peer-to-peer pay it forward selection process for all programming.

In its decade long existence, STUFFED Arts presented 200+ dance artists from NYC and the surrounding areas and fed over 3,000 hungry New Yorkers.

For more information, visit www.stuffedarts.org