WCC Creative Cafe
The WCC Creative Cafe takes place from 4-7 p.m. every Thursday at the Winterville Cultural Center (71 N. Church St.). Admission is a $1 donation to the center and open to the public. Go to wintervillecenter.com, call 706-742-0823 or send an email to wintervillecampus@gmail.com for more information.
Attendees gather at the Winterville Cultural Center every Thursday, sipping free coffee or hot chocolate while working on paintings and other projects in a space specifically set aside for their creativity and community.
The WCC Creative Cafe’s mission is to create a “third place” — a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg as a space where people can be outside of their homes or workplaces.
“Where do we go to hang out that we don’t have to really spend money and we can just go?” said Flannery Ragan of Athens. “We had some cool places, but I feel like a lot of them have been shutting down recently.”
Ragan is a secretary at the cultural center and created the program in May. Her creative experiences in high school inspired her to make the idea a reality.
“I love the community that art class creates, and I love the way that it’s set up where you’re sitting around creating whatever you want to create and talking to your friends,” Ragan said.
She said the event’s attendance picked up steam over the summer when enough people gathered to fill the room.
“It started growing pretty fast,” Ragan said. “We were doing tie-dye too, outside, and bleach painting.”
Each month, the event has a theme for its crafts, but attendees can make whatever they want. There is also a supply swap table where attendees can donate and pick up free art supplies, which was filled with acrylic paints, paint markers and canvases.
About 10 people were at the event on Sept. 3, including Cecilia Harris of Winterville. Harris said she’s attended events at the cultural center for years, but it was her second time attending the Creative Cafe.
“It's really helped me bring me back out,” Harris said. “So now, I'm exploring who I am now.”
Harris said she’s not as creative as she once was, but she likes to draw inspiration from others when starting her project of the day. At this meeting, she colored sunflowers with paint markers while chatting with other attendees.
“Even if you’re not creative, artistic, it's just a place to kind of come play and just sort of let the mind wander,” Harris said.
Ragan said the cultural center plans to open a musician’s lounge that functions similarly to the Creative Cafe, where musicians can have acoustic jam sessions and find community. When asked about the Creative Cafe’s future, she said she hopes it continues bringing people together.
“I’m looking at this table over here, people who’ve never talked to each other before today, and they’re talking like they’re friends,” Ragan said.