Spotlight Six Winter 2025
Six CreativeGround Profiles We Love: Winter 2025
Cozy Up with This Season's Spotlight Six
Posted 12/19/2025
At CreativeGround, the new season is an excuse to celebrate and spotlight a new batch of the people and places behind each profile.
Check out the new Spotlight Six - profiles that use CreativeGround to share their creative activities and services, connect with and build their networks, and help their communities. Contact them through their profiles and read Journeys from some of them to learn more about how they use CreativeGround. We know you'll be as inspired as we are!
Heart of Ellsworth
Based in Ellsworth, ME
Heart of Ellsworth, is a community-based nonprofit dedicated to strengthening downtown Ellsworth, Maine through arts, culture, economic vitality, and community engagement. As a designated Maine Downtown Center / Main Street community, Heart of Ellsworth supports a lively, welcoming, and resilient downtown by fostering partnerships, activating public spaces, coordinating cultural programs, and encouraging a strong local economy. Their work brings people together around public art, hands-on creativity, and year-round opportunities to experience local artists and makers.
As a Main Street organization, Heart of Ellsworth works at the intersection of arts, culture, and economic development. CreativeGround allows us to easily identify local and regional artists, makers, and creative professionals who can contribute to downtown activation projects, public art, workshops, and cultural programming. Since we are not solely an arts organization, CreativeGround helps bridge our broader revitalization goals with the creative talent needed to bring cultural expression and energy to downtown. It also provides a platform for us to share our work and stay connected to the wider creative network across Maine and New England.
Prescott Park Arts Festival
Based in Portsmouth, NH
For over 50 years, the mission of the Prescott Park Arts Festival has been to provide financially accessible, multi-generational, high-quality, family-friendly, art and educational outreach to a large and diverse audience. The Festival combines a grassroots, community feel with the allure that accompanies the Grammy Award winning national touring acts that grace the stage. The Festival experience is as unique as each person coming through the gates; some purchase a season pass and attend every movie, concert and see the musical again and again, while others make that annual pilgrimage from over an hour away as part of a family tradition that often spans generations. Some come once or twice a week throughout the summer, while others might come for an evening stroll through the park while their kids dance in the lawn to the soundtrack of that evening’s offerings. One thing is universal though, the Festival holds a beloved place in the hearts of all who do come through those gates.
Souls of India
Based in Boston, MA
Souls of India (SoI) is a Boston based Indian Creative Arts Collaboration company co-founded by Samadrita Bhattacharyya and Meghma Banerjee. Their mission is to elevate Indian classical arts in the community through innovative productions and push boundaries by collaborating with dancers, musicians, and vocalists across genres to tell stories rooted in Indian heritage while embracing global influences. They offer a vital platform to network with diverse artists, funders, and visionaries to showcase dynamic and impactful perspectives and foster cross-cultural dialogue.
CreativeGround has opened doors for Souls of India to give back to the community. We have also been identified and invited by city/town organizations like Know Your Neighbour Woburn, and Worcester Public Library this year to showcase our dynamic and impactful stories rooted in Indian heritage while embracing global influences and foster cross-cultural dialogue in a diverse community. In short, CreativeGround has empowered Souls of India to nurture multicultural community-building events over the last 2 years.
The Arts Bus
Based in Bethel, VT
Rolling along since 2010, The Arts Bus is a traveling art and music studio, pop-up theatre, workshop, and makerspace engaging children in the fun of creativity through free arts education. From the moment they come aboard the bus, kids find inspiring, innovative activities prepared just for them to enjoy! One visit they’ll play with clay, another they’ll paint fabrics to wear. They’ll learn new music with instruments and sing thru sock puppets. They will paint, perform, write, tell stories, clown around, enact drama, and share ideas limited only by the boundless imaginations of their artists and the children themselves.
River Valley Dance Project
Based in Deep River, CT
Linalynn Schmelzer, BFA, MS, is the esteemed proprietor of the River Valley Dance Project and School, where her passion for the art of dance and extensive expertise converge. With a career spanning nearly two decades, Linalynn has emerged as a distinguished performer, choreographer, and instructor, leaving an indelible mark on the dance landscape of New England. The River Valley Dance Project (RVDP) has delved into the realms of dance film creation, site-specific choreography, and dynamic collaborations with live musicians. The River Valley Dance Project School offers classes catering to diverse age groups and encompasses various dance styles, reflecting Linalynn's commitment to fostering a vibrant and inclusive dance community.
CreativeGround helps me as an artist and creative to connect and share my work with a larger community.
W.A.R.
Based in Pawtucket, RI
Worship Arts Restoration is dedicated to enriching their communities, spiritually, culturally and artistically. W.A.R. galvanizes their resources and their culturally diverse member artists in collaborative productions, in ministry and charitable outreach and, most recently, in regular performance work at the newly acquired Maplestreet Performing Arts Center (MPACT) in Pawtucket, RI. Their arts outreach has included over a decade of prison ministry; bi-annual performances and practical supplies for housing and food insecure populations; music and dance outreach at local nursing homes and other institutions as well as healing arts and disaster relief to Haiti and Puerto Rico.
Did you know that there are over 100 ways to search the nearly 30,000 artists and organizations on CreativeGround? Check out our tips to Search, Find, and Contact more profiles and build your network!
Looking to share the spotlight with your fellow creatives? Nominate a profile you love to get the spotlight treatment or submit your own Journey.
See you next quarter with the next Spotlight Six!