Mission & Vision

Mission of the Fine Arts Work Center

The Fine Arts Work Center, a non-profit enterprise, is devoted to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers through residency programs, to the propagation of aesthetic values and experience, and to the restoration of the year-round vitality of the historic art colony of Provincetown.

Vision of the Fine Arts Work Center

The Fine Arts Work Center will continue to give emerging writers and visual artists time, space and financial assistance to live and work in a community of peers and elders in the historic arts colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The Fellowships, upon which the Work Center was founded in 1968, will remain the Work Center's primary, central purpose and mission. What sets FAWC apart are its founding principles. The Work Center is a non-academic organization that supports a community of peers of original talent and promise, allowing them complete freedom in pursuit of their art. Beyond being in residence, Fellows have no obligations or duties. FAWC exercises special vigilance and rigor in preserving this first tenet of the Founders’ original writ. Its two sides, visual art and writing, provide a matrix for the cross-pollination of creative ideas, in a place rich in artistic history and great natural beauty.

The Fine Arts Work Center will continue to be nationally recognized for its many distinctions. Its increasing renown is a beacon, heralding similar aspirations elsewhere in the world. Simultaneously, the Work Center fulfills its leadership role in the maintenance of the well-being, success and prosperity of the larger Provincetown arts community. The Work Center embraces its employees as members of its family, and strives to compensate them with the same concern as that accorded the Fellows.

At the Core: The Fellowship Program

FAWC serves emerging artists, whose work is on the cusp of recognition, through its signature Fellowship Program, in which ten visual artists and ten writers are provided with housing, studio space, monthly stipends, variety of peers, and access to a wide range of distinguished mentors, during a seven-month stay in Provincetown.

Simple but comfortable apartments, individual artists’ studios, and monthly stipends that periodically increase will continue to be the organization’s foundation. FAWC seeks to take a “rigorous laissez-faire” approach to the program, preserving its integrity and excellence through the model that has served its artists and writers with success for so long.

The Writing and Visual Arts Committees are composed of mature professionals, and exercise sole authority in the selection of Fellows, and in all matters of aesthetic judgment and educative policy, insofar as these affect the Writing and Visual Arts Fellowship programs. In close conjunction with the Fellows, they may provide direction or assistance in all aspects of each year's activities.

Opportunities for All

To extend the Fine Arts Work Center’s spirit of encouragement and inspiration, FAWC’s summer and fall programs offer courses and workshops at all levels, providing artists and writers the opportunity to learn from a seasoned faculty, many of whom are Work Center former Fellows or Committee Members. These workshops are designed to stimulate, challenge and encourage mastery of craft, identify inner resources and broaden vistas. FAWC provides a wealth of events—readings, slide talks, lectures and exhibitions, all free and open to the public—that invigorate, inform, and enlarge the arts community. The Work Center is in the process of creating a low-residency MFA program in both visual arts and creative writing, in conjunction with distinguished academic institutions.

Resources

As the Work Center’s resources continue to grow, it seeks to invest in additional property, such as land, housing, studios, and other facilities that conduce the Founders’ aims in preserving the art colony, while keeping abreast of its needs in the difficult economic environment of the town. The Fine Arts Work Center envisions offering a breadth of contemporary technological resources required by artists and writers in the 21st Century.

Community

Founded in part to repopulate the Provincetown arts colony and to assist the winter economy, the Fine Arts Work Center by its very existence and success, plays a leading and responsible role in the life and fortunes of the larger community. The Fine Arts Work Center also creates a casual and stimulating communal environment for all who participate in its activities.

Governance

The Fine Arts Work Center strives for professional governance throughout the organization, with significant leadership provided by artists and writers on its Board of Trustees and Committees.

Spirit

With an ever-increasing scope of activities and a wondrous future, the Fine Arts Work Center adheres to its Founders’ aims, a unique amalgam of high idealism and plain practicality. While the heart of the Fine Arts Work Center will continue to be its Fellowship Program, its soul is arts’ potential to reveal the profoundest truths of human existence.

Year-round FAWC lives and breathes a casual mystique of irresistible confidence and focus. A spirit of plainness prevails, an air of abstraction, light, comfort and good will of people devoted to their work, productive, and pleased with their situation.