Creative Arts Workshop | Arts & Culture
Jennifer Simpson and Trina Mace Learned. Simpson plans to serve as Interim Executive Director. Lucy Gellman Photo.
When Trina Mace Learned stepped foot in Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) as a consultant three years ago, she never intended to become a staff member. Two title changes and a stint in leadership later, she’s saying goodbye for real—just as the organization begins to plan for its artistic future with a new influx of state funding.
Learned, a preservationist and planner who chairs New Haven’s Historic District Commission, has served as the executive director of Creative Arts Workshop since March 2024 (prior to that time, she was interim executive director, following Anne Coates’ resignation in February 2023). On Wednesday, she announced that she will be retiring at the end of the month. She plans to use the time to complete a move from Westville to Wooster Square, and finish a book, based on her graduate thesis, about the history of Sleeping Giant State Park.
During her tenure, she has focused on keeping the organization afloat, managing an annual budget of just under $900,000.
Jennifer Simpson, who is currently CAW’s communications director, will assume the role of interim executive director. She brings a background in historic preservation, grant writing, and development, including as executive director of the Madison Historical Society. In that role, she has been able to work closely with Astrid Bernard, who joined CAW as a registrar in 2018 and now serves as CAW’s deputy director.
Her priorities include diversifying streams of funding, building out new and existing community partnerships, and looking critically at how teachers, all working artists themselves, are compensated for their labor. As she takes the reins, she will also manage a $250,000 planning grant that is coming through the state’s Community Investment Fund. More on that below.
“I hope that we can, not revitalize [exactly], but offer more,” Simpson said in an interview Wednesday afternoon, in CAW’s bright book binding studio on the building’s third floor. Downstairs, over 100 works in a sweeping student and faculty show looked out onto the Hilles Gallery, eagerly awaiting an opening reception set for Thursday. “We want to be responsive to the community.”
“I feel very, very dedicated to this place,” Learned added during an interview in her office. While she plans to officially retire at the end of the month, she will stay on to teach a class in memoir writing that she piloted last year, and has continued to teach during this current semester.
Learned’s work with CAW began over three years ago, when she came into the organization as a consultant in 2022. At the time, Coates had been the executive director for five years, including during the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic. She was working to right an old, financially struggling ship with significant structural needs. Learned presented her with a report in fall 2022, and then stayed on at Coates’ request.
In February 2023, Coates left with slightly over a month’s notice. At the time, it felt like part of a much bigger seismic shift in the city’s arts community: Artspace New Haven’s director had announced the month prior that she was leaving, and the organization ultimately closed its Orange Street doors, with shows that then kept the space alive at CAW for several months. The Ely Center became embroiled in controversy after ostensibly failing to keep a staff member safe. And in the middle of it all, CAW braved the storm.
Learned, who was already familiar with the institution, became the interim executive director for about a year, after which CAW’s board made the appointment formal. During her tenure, she has built out a partnership with ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), which now uses four of CAW’s studio spaces during the day, tried “forging relationships” with more people in the community, and set up a rotating exhibition schedule that brings a dozen shows per year into the Hilles Gallery.
It’s been her biggest priority, given a changing nonprofit landscape, “to sustain and perpetuate the organization,” she said. CAW currently has a full-time staff of four people, with “a whole bunch” of part-time and contract teachers. Currently, only about 60 percent of its revenue comes from course tuition, meaning that another 40 must come from donors, foundation-based grantmaking initiatives, and corporate gifts.
“The arts are not necessarily the preferred place to put your scarce resources,” Leaned said. So part of her work has been thinking about CAW’s potential as a rental space for other artists and arts organizations in the community, an idea that Simpson plans to build on.
She’s especially proud of working with ECA, because it supports future generations of artists. Or in her words, “it’s a financial arrangement, but it’s also a philosophical partnership.”
Simpson, meanwhile, is bubbling with ideas—in part because she knows CAW like the back of her hand. As she steps into leadership next month, her priority is bringing in new and different streams of income, including gallery and studio rentals (CAW’s studios go largely unused during the day, because most classes are in the evening), expanding partnerships with organizations in the Audubon Arts District, including Neighborhood Music School and the Educational Center for the Arts, and taking a second look at everything from course fees to exhibition opportunities to faculty compensation.
She’ll also be managing a major grant for the organization, which opened in 1961 and is now grappling with the realities of an aging building. In April, Simpson helped CAW apply for a grant from the Community Investment Fund (CIF), a project of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) that provides support and resources to community organizations and initiatives across the state. Last month, DECD announced that CAW had received $250,000 to do a master plan for a facilities upgrade.
That funding is part of an overall $60 million going to 32 projects across the state, from the still-evolving Eli's Garden of Healing to the Goffe Street Armory to the Towns of Hamden, Stratford, Wethersfield, Windsor and Windsor Locks (a full list is available here). Simpson, who managed a $140,000 “Good to Great” state grant for the Madison Historical Society, said she’s optimistic about the grant, and excited to get started.
“We are going to look towards the future.” she said.
Downstairs in the Hilles Gallery, an investment in that future—and in the present—is already on display. With over 100 works, CAW’s annual student and faculty show has become proof positive of the artistic magic that happens within the organization’s walls, from bookbinding and fiber arts to printmaking, painting, and pottery. The show runs through Nov. 15.
CAW is located at 80 Audubon St. in the Audubon Arts District. A full list of its classes and workshops is available here.