🎨 ArtsBitter Lake Community Center
4.4Seattle, WA
Ages 5–15About this program
This Seattle Parks and Recreation community centre on the edge of Bitter Lake in north Seattle runs one of the deepest youth art catalogues in the city system, banded tightly by age. Five- to seven-year-olds get Fall Art and Autumn Creativity; eight- to ten-year-olds get Fall Illustrations and Harvest Festivities; five- to eight-year-olds get Youth Art blocks like Critters and Costumes and Winter Festivities; and nine- to fifteen-year-olds get Intermediate Art in Manga and Cartooning or Pacific Northwest mixed media. Summer adds Explore Drawing for 5-7, Mini Masterpiece portrait work for 8-11, and week-long art camps in cartooning and manga. Classes are cheap by Seattle standards - roughly $60-84 for a six-week session, about $125 for a camp week - and run in two short sessions per quarter rather than continuously, so each one has its own start date and its own registration window through the city's catalogue. The centre also runs ballet, creative dance, piano, a Mathletics maths ladder, robotics and coding, and Seattle Preschool Program classes, and its annex sits behind Broadview-Thomson K-8.
Reviewers describe a well-run centre with large, bright indoor spaces for sports and crafts, friendly staff, new playground equipment and a busy calendar of activities for young people.
Google reviews cover the whole building rather than the art classes. The one detailed negative review is a parent's account of the separate Seattle Preschool Program here, describing unaddressed bullying and inattentive staff, and it says nothing about the youth art programme.