Organization Details:

The mission of the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island is to develop, foster, and promote activities in art, culture, and humanities on Staten Island.

To fulfill our mission, we at COAHSI provide technical assistance to cultural organizations and individual artists; offer a variety of workshops and seminars; administer re-grants; work with schools and teaching artists to foster arts-in-education programs; foster the folk art of Staten Island communities through programming and field work; provide marketing for Staten Island artists and cultural organizations through a quarterly cultural newspaper and a weekly event e-blast; provide networking meetings for individual artists of all disciplines; collaborate with other Staten Island organizations on arts and humanities projects.

Description and/or History:
The Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI) is Staten Island's arts council, providing resources to individuals and organizations in the arts, cultural, and humanities sector. COAHSI was founded in 1992 by working artists and arts administrators who regarded a local arts council as an essential tool in community cultural development.

These founding artists and arts workers envisioned a specific kind of organization; "We stand to invent something revolutionary; a democratically-run, grassroots kind of organization. Our emphasis was on empowering artists and arts organizations to control their own futures by inventing new ways of working-through collaboration instead of competition. We see [COAHSI] as a service organization that fosters independence and promotes mutual support, the sharing of information and resources, and the exchange of services." [Quote from original founding documents, 1992]

COAHSI remains true to these roots by being engaged with the local community of artists and cultural organizations and providing services and support to them through Arts-in-Education programs, Folk Arts Programming, Technical Assistance and Professional Development Services, Re-grants for the Arts, Community Outreach (with a focus on under-served communities), Borough-wide Inclusive Cultural Marketing, and Audience Development Projects.

Contact people:

Melanie Cohn, Executive Director, (718) 447-3329, (email) Racquel Cornali, (718) 447-3329, (email)

Address:

1000 Richmond Terrace, Bldg. G. Staten Island, NY 10301 (See a map)

Directions:

COAHSI is located on the grounds of Snug Harbor Cultural Center (Richmond Terrace and Snug Harbor Road, Staten Island, New York.