MISSION + PURPOSE

Goodyear Arts is an artist-led, nonprofit residency and multi-arts events program based on this truth: Artists need TIME, SPACE, MONEY, and COMMUNITY. In underused commercial spaces, we offer paid studio residencies for excellent and daring local visual, literary, and performing artists and present free-and-public arts events.

OUR PROGRAMMING

Goodyear Arts presents free and public performances, exhibitions, and multidisciplinary events because we believe all audiences deserve to engage with exceptional and challenging contemporary work. Through our work, we broaden the community’s access to artistic practices by supporting artists, curators, and organizers in an inclusive setting. Core to our mission is our residency program which provides time, space, money, and community to local artists each year. Alumni of the residency program are invited to join the Goodyear Arts Collective, who make use of free studio and rehearsal space at Goodyear Arts.

COMMITMENT TO EQUALITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION

Goodyear Arts seeks to establish a wide sense of belonging for everyone and we are actively working to support artists and programming that reflects diversity in identity, orientation, geography, perspective, and circumstance. We seek to provide additional resources to independent artists andorganizers who challenge dominant discourses. We are committed to equity, accessibility, and inclusion in terms of race, ethnicity, ability/disability, neurodiversity, and gender identity for artists and audiences. To demonstrate and carry forward our commitment, we follow these guiding principles, which are drawn from our practices:

• At least 50% of all artists-in-residence identify as BIPOC.

• Art exhibitions and performance events with three or more groups/artists must include at least 33% BIPOC artists.

• To better include Spanish-speaking artists and audiences, we present all opportunities in both English and Spanish.

• We actively encourage involvement from folx of diverse backgrounds.

• All applications—including open calls for residencies, exhibitions, proposals, and other opportunities—are always free of charge and always simple. We design these so that they never burden artists with needless hoops to jump through.

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Goodyear Arts (GYA) was founded in 2015 when a developer invited local artists to activate a former Goodyear tire and oil change center in Uptown pre-demolition. An experiment to demonstrate how the traditional arts landscape in Charlotte could be challenged was conceived. After this initial success, GYA activated a second location for one-year and has since settled into our third/current space at Camp North End. Throughout our history as an artist-run space, GYA has continually embraced risk, questioned assumptions, and explored ways to support artists and forge connections with the public in intimate, experimental, and generative ways. GYA has transformed from a three-month opportunity with a local developer, to a nomadic organization that thrives on change and creativity, to its celebrated place in Charlotte’s cultural community as an alternative art space that operates beyond the constraints of traditional gallery activities. Goodyear Arts was founded by artists Amy Bagwell, Graham Carew, and Amy Herman.