Mission: Pratt Fine Arts Center makes art accessible to everyone, offering a place for spirited exchange, self expression and personal transformation through creativity. Pratt is dedicated to fostering artistic development and engagement locally, nationally and internationally. A unique multidisciplinary visual arts resource, Pratt provides education and instruction, community programs and professionally equipped art making facilities.

Pratt aspires to extend the visual arts experience to people from all backgrounds, working at all skill levels. Within an extraordinary community of artists, students and patrons, Pratt strives to be a conduit for artistic development, providing pathways to knowledge, support and inspiration and changing the way individuals see themselves and the world around them.

HISTORY 
Pratt Fine Arts Center began as a modest facility with a big vision to build a community of artists and an educational center providing the tools and the training to support the creation of visual art. Today Pratt stands exactly as its founders envisioned: as The Place to Make Art.

For almost 35 years, Pratt Fine Arts Center has been providing the Northwest and global community with the opportunity to experience art first hand. Pratt’s classes teach over 3500 students and its studios serve more than 500 working artists each year. Combined, its classes, exhibitions, lectures and programs reach more than 13,000 people annually. Many established, well-known local artists had their beginnings in our studios.

Pratt is the only facility in the Northwest where absolute beginners and established artists work side-by-side creating art. Affordable studios with unparalleled equipment offers artists of all ages, ability and backgrounds with the opportunity to learn, experiment and create.

EDWIN T. PRATT
Pratt Fine Arts Center is named in honor of  Edwin T. Pratt, who served as Executive Director of the Seattle Urban League from 1961 to 1969. His assassination in that year by unknown assailants was deeply felt by the many Seattleites who had come to depend on Pratt's calm leadership during a period of social upheaval.

Edwin Pratt was born December 6, 1930, in Miami. He graduated from Clark College in Atlanta and later received his master’s degree in Social Work from Atlanta University. He worked for the Urban League in Cleveland and Kansas City before coming to Seattle in 1956. It was in his role of Executive Director, which he assumed five years later, that he developed the Triad Plan for the desegregation of Seattle schools, and later led an initiative to create equal housing opportunities.

Pratt Fine Arts Center is proud to serve as a lasting tribute to a man who devoted his life to improving the quality of life for all people.

Pratt Fine Arts Center does not discriminate in hiring, membership and provision of services in regard to race, color, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, political ideology, age, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, or the presence of any sensory, mental or physical disability.