More than 60 years ago, a group of like minded artists and retired art educators began a grassroots movement to provide art classes for the Bonita Springs community.

They just had such vision and they wanted to help people.

They wanted to be out in the community.

They wanted to bring arts here.

They wanted to bring all kinds of arts here.

And these people would just be volunteering their time as faculty and walking around the room and helping people learn how to paint and draw.

And that was our beginning is pretty interesting.

The original Center for the Arts campus, located on old 41, offered classes and the visual arts, including drawing, painting, sculpture, pottery and photography.

The vision even then continued on about this concept of multipurpose, multiuse, bringing the community in tying together with people and linking the arts to lots of different things.

Through the years.

the center's curriculum continued to expand, and the group also began to showcase small concerts and film presentations.

Incorporating these other disciplines into their existing space was proving to be difficult.

But as luck would have it, a vacant building on Bonita Beach Road would prove to be the perfect home for their new performing arts center.

So we're here today in what used to be a church is now the Moe Auditorium and Film Center.

It seats 200 people.

It's a lovely, lovely space.

And our other building on this campus is larger.

It has an auditorium that seats 400 and has studios circulating around it.

So you can study music here, you can perform music here, you can study theater here, you can perform theater here.

You add the adults, working people, the seniors and the parents and the families.

You're looking at 100000 people that move through this campus in any given year.

And they are not all members, I mean, our member count is around 2000.

So that's a really nice, wonderful number of members.

But the number of people in the impact is really, really large.

From that early grassroots movement to the flourishing campus of today.

The Center for the Arts focus has always remained the same.

We have a little tagline.

It's, you know, two centers, one mission arts for all.

That's what we eat, sleep, drink, live.

Function here in the centers.

It's what we do.

It's who we are.