AS220, Providence

AS220 is a non-profit community arts center located at 115 Empire Street in Downtown of Providence. AS220 maintains four dozen artist live/work studios, around a dozen individual work studios, four rotating exhibition spaces, a performance space, a black box theatre, a dance studio, a print shop, a community darkroom and digital photo lab, a high-tech fabrication lab, an organization-run bar and restaurant, a recording studio, and a youth program, AS220 Youth (formerly named the Broad Street Studio).

AS220 was founded in 1985 by Umberto Crenca, Susan Clausen, and Scott Seabolt as a space for artists and performers in the realms of visual art, music, dance, and writing to exhibit their work and be experimental. They sought to create a forum without the pretension or curatorial constraints of the traditional art world.

In 1992, AS220 acquired its own 21,000 square foot building on 95-121 Empire Street, which it renovated in order to create a space for a mixed-use arts complex including resident artists, Groundwerx Dance Company, and the Perishable Theater. The Empire Street complex at AS220 draws in an estimated 50,000 people per year. It houses the AS220 Performance Space, The AS220 Bar, AS220 Foo(d), the AS220 Youth Studio, a darkroom, three gallery spaces, and twenty resident/work studios for artists.