ArtPlace Campus

A campus for art and opportunity in East Waco

ArtPlace Campus brings two projects of Cultural Arts of Waco together on one site: ArtPlace, a hub for visual and multimedia art at 418 Elm Avenue, and Yellow Cottage Kitchen, a training bakery at 402 Tyler Street.

Give to the ArtPlace FundSee the two buildings

Concept rendering of ArtPlace from Elm Avenue: the old building painted with a giant blue letter A, joined to a row of orange shipping containers

Two buildings, one campus

Concept rendering of ArtPlace seen from down the street, with stacked orange shipping containers beside the old building

ArtPlace

418 Elm Avenue

A historic building becoming a year-round home for exhibitions, film, music, dance, spoken word, and arts education for young people.

Read about ArtPlace
Rendering of the planned Yellow Cottage Kitchen building with a yellow canopy

Yellow Cottage Kitchen

402 Tyler Street

A training bakery where adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities build job skills, confidence, and community.

Visit yellowcottagekitchen.org

418 Elm Avenue has stories to tell

The building opened as the first Pipkin Drug Store and later became a segregated cinema. It stood through the 1953 Waco tornado, then sat empty for years.

Cultural Arts of Waco is turning it into ArtPlace: a place for exhibitions, classic movie nights, lectures, dance, poetry, and music, and a year-round home for the annual Art on Elm exhibition.

Our mission: to bring people together through the arts.

The two-story building at 418 Elm Avenue as it stands today, with weathered walls and boarded street-level openings

What ArtPlace is for

Youth arts education
Classes and a learning lab for young people.
Community arts, music, and film
Workshops, performances, and screenings for the whole neighborhood.
A public art space
A gallery and public art space, open year-round.

Designed by LOT-EK, built from shipping containers

The design comes from LOT-EK, the New York and Naples studio founded by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano. LOT-EK has designed exhibitions and installations for MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Guggenheim.

Their plan keeps the old building and steps a row of upcycled shipping containers down beside it, making room for a gallery, a learning lab, a maker space, an arts store, and a cafe.

Close view of the stacked orange shipping containers with glass ends, beside the brick side wall of the old building
ArtPlace at night, with the containers lit from inside and the blue letter A glowing on the building
Side wall of the building painted with the word ARTPLACE in tall blue letters
Aerial view of the corner site showing the old building and the stepped row of containers with solar panels on their roofs

Concept renderings by LOT-EK, 2017. The final design may change.

Staying a community place

Cultural Arts of Waco invested in East Waco long before the area drew commercial interest, beginning with the $2.8 million Doris Miller Memorial.

The campus will stay a place for the neighborhood. What it earns will go back into family programming.

Progress so far

  1. Cultural Arts of Waco is founded as Waco Cultural Arts Fest.

  2. LOT-EK delivers the ArtPlace concept design for 418 Elm Avenue.

  3. Yellow Cottage Kitchen runs its pilot with the Opportunity Center at The Arc of McLennan County.

  4. 418 Elm Avenue gets a new roof donated by Steven Mann of Placemaker Pro.

  5. The Mabee Foundation awards a $120,000 challenge grant toward the Yellow Cottage Kitchen building.

  6. Cultural Arts of Waco is named a TFNB Charity Champion and honored on the field at Baylor Homecoming.

Ways to help