HISTORY
By the time Continuum Culture & Arts was incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2015 the commitment of its founders to both art and social justice had a history that already went back decades.
Artistic Director, Andrew Drury, is a drummer/composer whose formative experiences include mentorship with Ed Blackwell, performing with Wadada Leo Smith, and being active in the Connecticut Jazz scene in the 1980s. He also began working with people in historically marginalized populations in 1989: Drury and Continuum board member Alissa Schwartz started an afterschool arts program in a housing project in Middletown, Connecticut (that has continued to this day) and the two also led arts workshops in maximum security prisons.
Drury’s main work in Connecticut was with The Music and Arts Center for the Handicapped in the city of Bridgeport where he led a variety of workshops and lessons with people ages 5 to 90 who possessed a wide range of disabilities. Bridgeport was considered, along with Camden and East St. Louis, to be one of the poorest and most chaotic cities in the US. Bridgeport offered a bleak example of how systematically US economic and political structures victimized and abandoned people based on race and class.
The late 1980s also saw Drury self-producing multi-media performances, a thread that continued in Seattle in the 1990s, and has continued to the present. These early self-produced performances incorporated music, poetry, elements of theater, and food to create a sensually saturated art/ritual experience that critiqued racism, colonialism, capitalism, and abuse of the environment. Examples include his solo performance art piece, Thieves Die Like This, that explored US involvement in El Salvador, and his environmental pieces such as Earth Solos series of performances in Western landscapes.
By 1995 Drury’s abilities as a teacher and community artist were recognized by his acceptance as a Washington State Arts Commission Arts-in-Education program artist, and in 2000 when he was chosen as “Millennium Project” Artist-in-Residence with the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin for six months. In the 2000s Drury worked extensively with students with disabilities throughout the New York public school system. In 2005 Continuum board member Michael Reinke—then directing the Indiana Coalition on Homeless and Housing Issues—and Drury partnered on a tour in which Drury toured homeless shelters throughout the State of Indiana, leading two drumming workshops each day for a week. Through it all he was also touring internationally, recording, and earning acclaim as a drummer, composer, and improviser.
2015 AND BEYOND
By 2015 as these activities continued to flourish, Drury was becoming increasingly disillusioned regarding what he considered exploitative elements rampant in much of the music business, Arts-in-Education industry, and the larger Arts infrastructure. This reached a critical mass where Drury, Schwartz, and Reinke decided founded Continuum Culture & Arts as a 501(C)(3) non-profit organization.
With a board of three, a staff of one, strong educational offerings, connections to a vigorous international community of artists, and almost no overhead, from 2015 to 2022 Continuum proved to be nimble and extraordinarily productive. (See a list of our accomplishments below).
Continuum Culture & Arts steadily gained momentum and by 2021 it was clear the organization needed to expand, not only to sustain its high level of productivity but to manifest its vision by initiating new projects and programs. In early 2022 the Board was re-structured with Drury resigning in order to devote full attention to the role of Artistic Director, and we brought on five new members. By late 2022 Continuum launched the FLY! program, the Forest percussion quintet, and hired new staff.
