Collaborative Arts mission is to cultivate a hip, mindful, and inclusive Hub City community of artists, audiences, and critics empowered to create inspired and inspiring art.
The Leadership
We are currently re-developing our internal structure. For interim leadership questions, please contact Dan Swern at dan@colab-arts.org.
The Community
A goal of coLAB Arts is to not single-handedly operate projects of its own design, but to focus on cultural and artistic interests of the community while remaining true to the principal that art finds its own direction and artists are faced with their individual concerns that are reflective and progressive to the community in which these artists live and work.
Collaborative Arts is based in New Brunswick, nicknamed ‘Hub City,’ reflecting its central location between New York City and Philadelphia and its status as the fastest growing urban center in the State of New Jersey. The City is also home to Rutgers, the 8th oldest university in the nation and known as the birthplace of college football. With college students and young professionals making up the core of the City’s population, residents have become less likely to travel away from the city’s cultural offerings such as Crossroads Theatre, George Street Playhouse, the State Theater, and the Zimmerli Art Museum. In addition to these long-standing arts venues, New Brunswick has become a center for local punk rock and underground music, a scene that thrives on quasi-legal live shows in residential basements. Fortified by the particular way of life common in college towns, residents here are becoming more driven towards their own creative efforts and sharing their personal artistic expressions. Meanwhile an entirely new cultural landscape is developing in New Brunswick, emerging from the edified artistic shadow of New York City.
The Artist
The work being produced by individual residents of New Brunswick is born from a truly experimental exploration and is entirely capable of extending the boundaries of the art forms in which this work is being made. Most, formally trained with technical expertise in their medium at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts are translating those skills into sustainable careers in the arts.
Profiles of individual artists working with coLAB Arts can be found by navigating the ‘Talent’ section of our menu above or by clicking the links by genre below:
