The Vera Project

give small to GIVE BIG • May 6 & 7, 2025

For nearly 25 years, The Vera Project has been the home for inclusive, radical, youth-driven culture pulling hundreds of thousands of participants from across Seattle and the Puget Sound. Bands were formed; art was printed; raw emotion was honed and expressed; careers were established; lifelong friendships flourished – week-in and week-out for 1267 weeks and counting all starting in the back of that Local 46 electrical workers union hall.

For this GIVE BIG we're looking to give small and celebrate the individual stories that percolate all across our community. In particular, we want you to give towards the year(s) that meant the most to your time on our stages, in our studios, within or out of our walls. For example, Christopher (presently writing this description) is giving $20.21 to honor the year he landed in Seattle and was immediately welcomed into the fold within VERA.

We invite you to do the same!

Were you there at VERA's start? Give $20.01. Had the time of your life learning and working shows aligned with high school between 2010-2014? Give $10.14! Did your mind melt seeing Jeff Rosenstock play within a DEFY wrestling ring for Live From Our Living Room on June 5, 2022? Well then giving $65.22 sounds pretty swell, yeah?

The fun here is to find that magical number that best represents your favorite memories at The Vera Project and in turn supporting new memories being made for generations to come. Tag in your friends and let's turn GIVE BIG this year into a massive yearbook by giving small.

DONATE TO CELEBRATE YOUR FAV YEAR AT VERA

Mission

The Vera Project is an all-ages nonprofit space dedicated to fostering personal and community transformation through collaborative, youth-driven engagement in music and art. A music venue, screen print shop, recording studio, art gallery, and safe space for radical self-expression, VERA is a home to Seattle's creative community.

Description

The Vera Project is an all-ages, volunteer-driven music and arts center dedicated to fostering a participatory creative culture for young people and beyond. Founded in 2001 as a response to Seattle's Teen Dance Ordinance, VERA has grown from a safe space for all people to experience music and art performance into a vital community center that provides countless young people with world class concerts and gallery showings, creative workforce development and experiential learning opportunities, and alternative work positions, along with training in live and recorded sound engineering, event production, screen-printing, community organizing, leadership, and more. Our committee structure allows young community members, primarily aged 14-24, to lead the direction of the entire space and organization with which they are also participating, creating an intergenerational, collaborative arts community connected by shared creative and professional passions.

VERA's core programming and cultural offerings annually include hosting over 300+ music concerts in our main showroom, gallery, and Black Lodge stages; Ground Zero Radio newsroom; 12 visual art gallery showings; community-curated stages at multiple outdoor music festivals in Seattle; 50 live and recorded audio engineering and production classes; 50 screen-printing classes, lighting and security workshops; dedicated internships in the arts; one-hundred open sessions (free time for community members to work on projects) in our screen-printing and recording studios; and leadership training through our programmatic and steering committees. All of our shows, classes, and sessions are all-ages, affordable, substance-free, youth-led but multigenerational, and staffed by community members that have been trained or are currently training in the space. VERA also offers direct scholarships to lower income youth and never turns a single person away from a show or class for lack of funds.