As the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath closes out a reinvigorating summer season, it’s looking to a future heavily focused on community involvement and a diverse slate of performers and artists representing the cultural growths and shifts in the Midcoast and across Maine, according to its director.

The nonprofit is wrapping up its summer season, which has typically focused on the free Waterfront Park concert series with Main Street Bath every Saturday in July and August. This summer, the church added a new program in a space that used to be an art gallery turned into a multifunctional gallery and studio called the Community Art and Puppet Studio.

“We are offering free, subsidized and sliding-scale art workshops twice a week, which we wrapped up with a parade of puppets, costumes and masks made by local artists, children and family members,” said Matthew Glassman, executive and artistic director for CCAC.

The arts center hopes to open as many doors to its creative spaces as possible for young people and families, Glassman said. It is focused on three goals: attracting artists who haven’t been to the community before, allowing creativity to pour out into public spaces like the puppet parade and increasing invitations for community participation.

Glassman entered his new role starting in January, and much has changed this year. The first was the transformation of the venue’s programming to be multigenerational and invite creatives who transcend genre while preserving the familiar programs of years prior. Next is the gallery’s evolution into a multifunctional community art studio.

One exhibition was the puppet parade that took place on Aug. 24; the Undertow Brass Band played ragtime Mardi Gras music alongside a pop-up art lab with monster puppets, costumes and masks made in the Community Art and Puppet Studio in CCAC.

The multiple offerings for the arts center are recent changes that began in July, with some organizational shifts for long-term planning by expanding its staff, such as the new production manager, and performance and hospitality manager.

What will the fall bring into CCAC?

CCAC’s fall season plans began on Aug. 30 with the recent performance of The Soul Rebels, a New Orleans contemporary brass, funk and hip-hop group that has performed with hip-hop artists like Lauren Hill and the Wu-Tang Clan.

“It represents the beginning of a fall season, which I think of as sort of inaugural season for me at least that aims to expand the amount of programs we are doing here,” Glassman said.

In October, Latin bilingual Grammy-winning singer Mister G will perform for kids, an award-winning jazz trio called Roadwaves will perform, and Somali award-winning theater and multimedia artist Ifrah Mansour will perform “How To Have Fun In A Civil War.”

“We have been really wanting to do outreach to new Mainers, especially immigrants coming from Somalia and East Africa, which I know are many,” Glassman said.

Mansour’s performance is about her experience as a refugee escaping the civil war in Somalia. She uses a large-scale puppet for a one-woman show that is part of CCAC’s outreach focused on including the Somali communities in Lewiston and Portland.

Glassman envisions CCAC as a place where art and community become one, using a grassroots approach to reaching out and inviting more people to participate. Glassman wants culture to be upstream from economic and political systems, with imagination as the wellspring of culture.

An upcoming food-based program for CCAC is “Hanukkah-Mexicana,” celebrating the launch of a new cookbook called “Sabor Judío: The Jewish-Mexican Cookbook” by Mexican-Jewish authors Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle.

If the kitchen is fully functional in time, Mexican-Jewish food and lessons in Mexican and Jewish dancing will be offered. There will also be a three-part concert with an all-women Mariachi band and a Maine-based klezmer band that will combine toward the end of the evening.

“This level of community engagement is a newer energy, I would say,” Glassman said.

Funding goals for improvements

CCAC, as a nonprofit organization, will turn 50 in 2027, and the staff is looking ahead by making the arts center a four-season functional space that offers temperature control in hot summers and cold winters.

Recently, CCAC upgraded its annex space with new lighting and a sound system funded by in-kind donations. The CCAC annex will feature newcomers and up-and-coming New England artists.

Plans to restore the building as a historic site are in the works, but more recently, the arts center has repaired the troll door and shored up the underside of the deck. More repairs and restoration work are planned for the flooring and ceilings within the center.

CCAC hopes to buck the trend of performing art spaces closing due to a lack of funding or being saddled with too much debt to survive. Glassman said there are federal, state and municipal funding options to support the center’s capital expansions. For example, CCAC could incorporate into its programming selling beer and wine in a functional kitchen.

In the last couple of months, CCAC received an Onion Foundation grant for $20,000 to assist with its community engagement work and a Live Music Society grant for $25,000. In the past, the majority of the art center’s funds have come from ticket revenue, small to mid-sized donations and corporate sponsorships.

Glassman said Bath could advocate for and lobby for other funding opportunities to improve the center’s economic and social impacts. CCAC’s financial plan is to increase its foundational support through grant writing, increase its large gift-giving and grow its membership base.

Shifting demographics

CCAC is working with Bath Iron Works to hold one concert per season, curated by General Dynamics employees and featuring discounts.

“We have doubled the amount of events that we are doing this year since Matthew came on,” said Sara Moore, director of operations and marketing for CCAC. “We have got a lot of new multifaceted shows that are coming out as far as having music but incorporating other things into the music.”

Moore has noticed a major shift in the response CCAC is getting for the new programs the nonprofit organization offers. She described the center going through a reset with fresh ideas, bringing young people into the center and bringing in different venues that it hasn’t done before.

Moore said that although CCAC has always featured live music and theater, the arts were missing. There is a vibrancy at CCAC that attracts more people of all ages, such as the newest free Saturday morning art labs.

“The art space itself, to me, has rounded out what the Chocolate Church can become,” Moore said. “I feel like this is something our kids should be able to have, especially in a small town.”