The Seattle music industry has been rife with misfortune since COVID lockdown. Bucking odds, though, the Vera Project has a raft of good news. The city's stalwart all-ages nonprofit organization is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month, and its staff has plans to offer more opportunities for young artists and promoters, to put on more free shows, to launch a new festival, and to open a new 300-capacity venue in Georgetown. And they're going to do all this without selling a drop of alcohol. 

For a quarter century, Vera Project—currently headquartered at Seattle Center—has been hosting all-ages music shows and visual arts exhibits, teaching studio recording and screen-printing skills, and providing a “safe space for radical self-expression” for young people. Vera also has helped to transform Black Lodge from an off-grid cultural hub to a legit music venue. 

In an interview with The Stranger, Executive Director Ricky Graboski elaborated on Vera Project's ambitious vision for the near future. Vera's goal is to raise $2.5 million by early 2027, when the yet-to-be-named Georgetown space is set to open. (Vera signed a 20-year lease for it.) The org already has garnered more than 53 percent of that total. Much of it has come from Paul Allen's Allen Family Philanthropies; Graboski singles out Amber Rose Jimenez, the organization’s program officer, as an advocate for Vera. “They're just trying to support youth in a real way,” says Graboski. “[The decision] evolved quickly from what seemed like smaller funds to a full Seattle Center-wide thing. We were among the highest-funded [organizations]. We also pitched something fairly radical compared to what a lot of arts funding is pushing out there. Because we're just immediately spending the money on free shows run by young people for young people.”

Speaking of free shows, Vera has inaugurated “Ticket-blaster,” a program enabling over 60 no-cover events annually, to facilitate experimentation. In addition, the “Hidden Track” scheme—a series of shows produced by people in the community—will foster curatorial skills by six individuals per year, drawn from open applications and peer adjudication. The aim is to boost “under-represented subcultures, communities, or experimental artistic directions,” under Vera staff's mentorship and taking place in Georgetown. “We just started booking underground and alt-comedy stuff,” Graboski says. “We can use this opportunity to find new things out.” Another development is the Always All-Ages Fest, a multi-venue, cross-genre, pay-what-you-can extravaganza scheduled for November. As a bonus, VERA Art Gallery will offer free entry almost every Saturday. 

To help fund these endeavors, Vera brokered a brilliant deal with Band of Horses, who are donating a dollar per ticket sold on their upcoming tour. “We'd been talking to them about 25th-anniversary stuff, because they're an important band in Vera's history.” Graboski says he hopes to approach other bands with similar fundraising deals.

Much is riding on the multi-purpose Georgetown space, which will better accommodate Vera's demographic, most of whom live in the South End. “More young people need more opportunities. We have lots of friends in Georgetown who spent the last 18 months connecting with dozens of community groups to make sure it's something that the community actually wanted. 

“Vera is our home base, our all-ages space. Black Lodge is our underground venue. It's as close as we can be to the DIY scene we can get as a nonprofit. We're hoping Georgetown is our mutual aid space. We want it to be run by and for community, so every show's going to have a mutual aid group, a nonprofit, someone there who is supporting something in local community. Forty to 60 tickets at every show will be pay-what-you-can. We're having this crazy modular setup built into the space so we can reconfigure the room for anything.”

With news of the Crocodile being for sale, the health of Seattle nightlife seems more precarious than ever. Yet Vera Project appears to be thriving. What's their secret? “Our strategy has always been 'there's a better way.' Young people need access to arts, culture, community, and gathering spaces. Vera's been weirdly successful in choosing what's a fairly reckless strategy: If folks need things, we provide those things now, not to secure our legacy. And Vera's nearly gone out of business nearly 50 times since we were founded.” 

Grants from Doors Open and Satterberg, abundant donors, special events, and dedicated volunteers have also kept Vera thriving. “We've been scrappy forever. We try to keep our budget as low as possible. We've just gotten good at asking the right people for money at the right times. And we've gotten good at not having to take money from major corporations or foundations whom we don't agree with ethically.

“The message we're trying to send is, Vera's working because our community is largely young people, and they're not fully broken down by this system yet. They're still excited. Because they're building what we're putting on, it's working. If people gave in to this ecosystem in a real way, then artists would be supported, and maybe these venues wouldn't be shutting down.”