Developing, fostering and promoting music and visual art in Chelsea, Michigan and the surrounding communities.

Make a tax deductible donation to support the arts

Who We Are

The mission of the Chelsea Center for the Arts is to enhance the quality of life in Chelsea and the surrounding areas through programs which encourage engagement with the arts.

The CCA offers lessons, classes, workshops, outreach programs, exhibitions, performances, and special events for children, teens, adults, and seniors. Programs produced with community partners, such as the Sounds & Sights Committee, the Chelsea District Library, and the River Gallery, further enhance the capabilities and impact of this important cultural resource, which also strives to contribute to the vitality of downtown Chelsea and support local and area artists.

Connecting Community Through the Arts

Chelsea Center for the Arts (CCA) is a community ideal wrapped around three elements: 

• Belief that the ability to express one’s self creatively enhances not only individual lives but also the quality of life collectively     
• An historic school given second life as a home for creative and artistic endeavor
• A management infrastructure that brings together community members engaged in creating, producing, teaching, and learning the creative and artistic disciplines

CCA is the only professionally staffed arts center (2.25 FTE) in Washtenaw County outside Ann Arbor, serving primarily the communities of Chelsea, Dexter, Grass Lake, Manchester, Pinckney, Saline, Stockbridge and other nearby areas.

Program Highlights

• Enrollment of approximately 150 students, primarily school-age, in individual music lessons. Chelsea’s public school music ensembles are consistent award-winners.
• Group instruction for beginning string instrument students 
• Early-childhood music program, Music Together, serving an initial group of 20 - 25 families.
• Art classes and workshops with registrations of about 100 each term.
• Eleven summer weeks of Sounds & Sights on Thursday Nights in downtown Chelsea, providing artist-management and administrative services in partnership with local merchants and the Chelsea Chamber of Commerce. 
• Incubator for Art Meets Business, a nascent program designed to provide advice, instruction and coaching on business practices to artists and performers.
• Investment of nearly $100,000 in improvements since 2007 to CCA’s historic building funded half and half by grant awards and donated in-kind services.