Nonprofit behind Colorado Springs City Auditorium revitalization receives $1 million grant
Mar. 6—Colorado Springs Community Cultural Collective is more than $1 million flusher.
The nonprofit, which is the driving force behind the revitalization of the 100-year-old City Auditorium, was awarded a $1.1 million grant for two of its four development programs: the Shovel Ready capstone culinary and hospitality program and the media arts workforce program.
"It's a game changer for humans," said CSCCC President and CEO Linda Weise. "For someone who worked so hard for so long in the space of the Colorado Springs Conservatory providing opportunities for young people, to now be in a space to provide creative opportunities for adults, it's truly been a humbling and eye opening experience."
Weise founded Colorado Springs Conservatory in 1994 to provide a performing arts education to children and teens. She left CSC in 2021 to lead CSCCC, which intends for the City Auditorium to house many occupants post-renovations, including nonprofit offices and workforce development centers, and provide spaces for theater productions, concerts and other performances.
The grant money comes from a workforce bill that went to Colorado Workforce Development Council, which distributed the funds to local workforce centers, including Pikes Peak Workforce Center. The money was marked for community grants to partners who do workforce innovation.
El Paso County organizations applied to PPWC for the grant last year.
"It's very innovative and business-led," said PPWC Executive Director and CEO Traci Marques about CSCCC. "It's a collective putting together programs that are needed for businesses."
CSCCC's culinary program, which is now in operation, offers food preparation skills, fine dining menu building, training in business, resource management, finance and ordering. The media arts program, which Weise hopes to launch April 1, will train people in sound and visuals, helping to prepare them for work in animation, the digital arts and more.
The remaining two development programs focus on early childhood enrichment, which is already in operation, and the theater technical arts, which Weise hopes to launch this summer.
The four programs are aimed at helping people upended by the pandemic recalibrate their work lives through earn and learn opportunities, skills training, work experience and paid work opportunities. Program graduates also are better able to help fill empty positions in the workforce.
"These people who are coming to these programs to learn are immediately interfacing with the community," Weise said. "They feel the love and the intention and we can collectively, as a community, demonstrate immediate impact."
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