Big changes are afoot at the CREATE Center for the Arts, as the nonprofit organization works to find a new home—and that’s just fine with Debra Mumm, founder and executive director of this unique community resource currently residing in Palm Desert.
“We’re a maker’s space meets community art center, and where tradition meets technology,” Mumm said when asked to describe the hub of communal activity and creativity she’s nurtured and expanded for more than a decade. “So we’re putting all of these things together. It’s a very exciting environment to be in.”
It was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when Mumm decided to take advantage of an opportunity to lease the impressive 20,000-plus-square-foot building at 73600 Alessandro Drive; at the time, she believed she’d found the “forever home” of the center. The building had previously been the upscale Venus de Fido day spa.
“It’s very beautiful, and it’s been an amazing stepping stone for us, because we’ve been able to expand and set up a lot more equipment,” Mumm said. “Before, we were basically a one-room schoolhouse. Now we’re like a university, right? It gave people a real opportunity to see the work that we do. But now (the owner) is selling the building, so we’re moving, because we don’t want to buy it.”
Moving to a larger building with a more flexible and adaptable interior has become an urgent need for CREATE—and fundraising is the immediate challenge Mumm is facing.
“We had targeted a building that we really wanted in the Perez Road Arts and Design District (in Cathedral City),” Mumm said. “That’s a thriving scene and high-visibility location. … It’s a hot little neighborhood with a lot of vibes going on.”
However, the building was abruptly pulled off the market just as discussions with the owner started in earnest.
“I liked that environment, but you know what? We’ve regrouped. Recently, someone said to me, ‘It doesn’t matter where you go. People will come to you.’ So our search is on valley-wide, but I’d like to stay in the mid-valley. I really love Palm Desert.”
With an end-of-May deadline for the center to vacate its current home, the pressure is on for Mumm and her board of directors to identify a new location and gather the required dollars to pay for the transition. Mumm said CREATE needs to raise $2 million.
“We need, like, $250,000 now, and the rest of the $2 million to vamp out the whole space over the next year,” Mumm said. “But the fundraising is going terribly. … We’ve done fundraising before, but mostly it has revolved around grant-writing and memberships. We’ve never just asked people to give us money, but now we have a reason to do that.”
Raising $2 million was not a challenge Mumm imagined she’d be facing when she initially opened an artists’ outpost back in 2011. After what was then the only valley art store, where she worked for many years, laid off staff during the 2008 recession and then closed in 2011, Mumm moved to fill the void.
“I thought, ‘Well, the valley is not going to have an art store,’” Mumm said, “so I opened an art store, which is what I knew how to do. Then I took a space down the street for a gallery and education (activities). Eventually, we merged those two places together over on Corporate Way (in Palm Desert) called Venus Studios. Then the neighbors next door moved out, so we added more studios and places for people to make art.”
Ever since, Mumm has maneuvered and expanded her artistic, creative community hub, adding varied activities she considers to be different modes of human creative expression.
“It became this whole big thing,” Mumm said, sounding a bit incredulous. “So next we came to the Palm Desert corridor, because I wanted to be in a neighborhood rather than isolated over in the industrial area. That’s when I rolled my private business into a nonprofit, so, essentially, Venus Studios became the CREATE Center in 2016.
“Obviously, I needed five more jobs,” she joked, “because running a nonprofit is like having your business—and mine was art supplies, education and running galleries—and then adding a board of directors, and fundraising, and all of those other crazy things that come with being in the nonprofit world. It was better that I didn’t know what I was getting into. … This has been a living, breathing kind of a project.”
When CREATE wound up in its current location, Mumm was at first convinced that the organization had finally had found its “forever home.” However, CREATE soon outgrew the space.
“Part of the beautiful thing that happened when we first moved into this former Venus de Fido building space was that wellness” became part CREATE’s offerings, Mumm said. “It became evident that people are hungry for that, so now we offer tai-chi and qigong, ecstatic dance, yoga and sound baths. All those sessions are well-attended.”
Add those wellness offerings to more traditional creative outlets like painting and drawing (in a variety of mediums), cooking, ceramics, woodwork, fashion design, costuming, photography, video production, podcast production, large-format screen printing and 3-D printing, among others, and that’s the inclusivity that Mumm strives for at the CREATE Center.
“Another thing that happened (is that we began) working with other organizations that needed the arts to serve their clients or who needed a space to meet,” Mumm said. “So we’ve worked with United Cerebral Palsy of the Inland Empire after-school program and young women leaders. We have master gardeners here, and we have like a blind gardening group. … It’s a free service that’s provided to the vision-impaired. We’ve had LEAPS Services (which serves neurodivergent people). We’ve had the Neuro Vitality Center. We hosted the Jewish Family Service’s ‘Let’s Do Lunch’ recently. So we’re really a collaborative, community-focused organization.
Raising $2 million was not a challenge Debra Mumm imagined she’d be facing when she initially opened an artists’ outpost back in 2011.
“You can bring your group in here. Everyone can have a nice meal and do whatever art activities they enjoy. You know we’re creative people here, so we throw fun parties. We do a lot of screen printing of tote bags and T-shirts for groups, so everyone goes home with a souvenir. We have team-building. There are a lot of things that aren’t even on our website, and custom events are a big (focus) for us.”
It’s clear when listening to Mumm—who was raised in Indio and is a self-proclaimed member of the “generator party” generation—that no one is more surprised than she is that the CREATE Center has become so important to so many people.
“I started with retired people, so it was mostly retired women taking painting classes,” she said. “But now we really serve everyone, pretty much from age 5 and up. We don’t have a lot of stuff for really young children, but we have all kinds of people come through here. When I talk about diversity—oh my goodness. We are really (here) for everyone.
“What’s happened is people are coming here every week, and they’re relying on this service. When I talk about this, it kind of makes me teary, but this is the only socialization that some of these people get every week. We’ve done annual estimates based on all of the classes and activities we offered. In our first year, (that total number of visits) was 500. This past year, it was 20,000 (visits). So it’s very active, and we are just hitting our stride over here. I estimate that (when we occupy a larger space), we’ll be able to serve 75,000 to 100,000 people (visits) annually.”
But unless donors, small and large, step up, the future of the CREATE Center is uncertain.
“We’re just trying to get some support from our community here,” Mumm said. “This place won’t exist without community support. We’ve not done a lot of marketing or advertising. We’re sort of this grassroots thing that is experiencing quantum growth and demand. We want to position ourselves to be able to fill the needs of the Coachella Valley—so it’s going to take a village.”
Or, in this case, a valley.
For more information or to donate, visit createcentercv.org/donate.