Creative Hackensack

Just imagine Hackensack as an arts and cultural destination in Bergen County. The Hackensack Creative Arts Team (CAT) is making that happen!

CAT is a diverse group of people that promote arts and culture in Downtown Hackensack. This group sprang from a nine-month creative placemaking planning process lead by the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking and the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation (NNJCF)’s regional arts initiative, ArtsBergen. In 2015, more than forty stakeholders representing the city’s businesses, non-profits, arts/cultural organizations, schools, healthcare groups, and government, worked together with the community-at-large to develop a creative placemaking plan that includes specific projects, events, and activities that would invigorate and highlight the arts in the city.

If this stuff seems cool to you, then CAT wants you! The city’s on board, with the opening of the Hackensack Performing Arts Center (HACPAC), so the arts are off and running. Over the next 10 years, Hackensack could well become a center for arts and culture in Bergen County—at least, that’s what we’re aiming for. Plus, more walkable, safer, cleaner, greener, healthier, and more fun. See you there!

Here’s what they’re working on:

Look around town for public art sponsored by CAT. It might be on a wall or around the public library or even on a downtown utility box. Just recently there were a lot of raccoons on Main Street!

The Hackensack CAT is planning more of these public art installations. The idea is to connect art with businesses, residents, and visitors. And the more art there is, the better Downtown Hackensack looks!

Artists, musicians, dancers, performers, designers, etc. Let the CAT know who you are, what you do, and share with us your interest in seeing the city revitalized via art. Contact us at artsbergen@nnjcf.org.