Our mission is to offer possibilities that transform the lives of children, teens, and young adults born into a world of unequal access to opportunity.
ABOUT SITAR
Sitar Arts Center serves families throughout Washington, DC who have unequal access to quality arts education and enriching out-of-school-time opportunities. Sitar’s state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary performance, exhibition, and learning facility serves as a community center for students, families, and artists. Since opening in 2000, we have never turned anyone away for inability to pay and ensure that 80% of our student body is from families with low-income. Sitar currently serves 900 students each year through classes in art, music, dance, drama, creative writing, digital arts, and design, taught by a teaching corps of volunteers and partners from our city’s finest institutions.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sitar Arts Center has creatively and carefully adapted to keep our students learning and growing - from online classes to the safe return to in-person summer camp. As our children, teens, and young adults return to school, Sitar’s core values of belonging, community, and equity have never been more essential.
HISTORY
Sitar Arts Center was founded by Rhonda Buckley and officially opened in 2000, providing programs to 50 children within the walls of a 2,600 square foot basement in a subsidized-housing apartment building in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, DC. Rhonda was inspired by Pat Sitar, a talented artist dedicated to the children of Adams Morgan, and named the center the Patricia M. Sitar Center for the Arts. The curriculum quickly broadened from music to include dance, visual arts, drama, and creative writing, all taught by volunteer artists and partnering arts organizations. Soon, Sitar was in need of much more space.
In the fall of 2004, Sitar Arts Center moved into its current state-of-the art, 10,700 square-foot-facility designed to provide optimal arts education. The student body rapidly grew, and by 2005 Sitar Arts Center served more than 300 students each semester. Sitar expanded its reach to students residing in every Ward throughout DC. After the recession, Sitar conducted a capital campaign to buy-down our mortgage and make the debt manageable. This freed Sitar to acquire additional space in 2015 to serve more students and deepen programs.
Sitar’s arts education model makes full use of DC’s unique cultural assets, vibrant people, and renowned artistic institutions. Sitar’s innovative business model brings together a volunteer faculty of teaching artists and arts organizations in strategic partnerships to deliver the highest-quality classes at the lowest cost. Sitar partners with some of DC’s finest arts organizations including The Washington Ballet, DC Jazz Festival, Levine School of Music, and Meridian Hill Pictures, among others, as well as a 100-person volunteer faculty. Attesting to the excellence in program quality, community impact, and history of expertise, Sitar was bestowed the 2017 Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in Arts Education.
PAT’S PLACE
Whenever someone tells the story of how and why Sitar Arts Center began, they start by remembering Patricia Sitar. A lively and creative spirit, Pat spent much of her life exploring the arts and looking for ways to better society. As a talented and accomplished artist, she understood the enormous benefits of arts in improving the quality of individual lives and the community as a whole. Because of Pat’s unwavering support and inspiration, Sitar Founder Rhonda Buckley named the organization “The Patricia M. Sitar Center for the Arts” in honor of her mentor. Pat was active at the Center until she passed in 2001, teaching art classes and serving as a close friend to many students and volunteers. Now Sitar Arts Center will forever be alive with Pat’s spirit and love for the arts, children, and community.
“We engage children and teens and young adults in the highest quality visual, performing and digital arts. We teach the arts so that our students learn about themselves and gain critical life skills. We create community for students and their families. And we are an untiring voice on their behalf.”
Where DC Youth Belong, Aspire & Achieve
