our story

Once upon time (10 years ago), a little art studio called Blue Cone was founded by Carolyn Hitt. This space located in the heart of Seattle’s first Art and Cultural District of Capitol Hill‘s Pike/Pine corridor, rapidly became a creative hub for artists from all over the city by way of Tuesday Tea, a weekly drop-in that provided low barrier access to community art space and recording opportunities. Attracting young and up and coming artists from all over the city through Teas and other collaborative initiatives like the Relevant Unknowns Artist Yearbook project, solid connections and relationships were built from these energies. Lasting ones. 

Fast forward to 2020, there was the COVID pandemic followed by a global uprising against police brutality, and here in Seattle, the block became front lines. As Capitol Hill Occupied Protest/Autonomous Zone took root around the now iconic “Western Barricade” on 11th and Pine, artist activists, organizers, and other community members and neighbors joined forces to defend and support each other in this chaotic time. This led to the founding of Forever Safe Spaces (FSS) by Carolyn Hitt and Julie-C and squad. 

In the years that followed from 2020-2023, FSS continued its creative and cultural placemaking and advocacy, founding two more studios: The Study at Cry Baby Studios and So Below Photo and Design in 2020, and joining forces with our neighbors Throwbacks NW and Vermillion in 2022 to launch Second Saturdays On The Block - a free creative street market and showcase. These spaces also hosted multiple cycles of apprenticeships with NW Folklife’s Creative and Cultural Workforce Development Program. 

The collective also participated in a number of creative humanitarian civic initiatives including the city’s Black Brilliance Research Project which identified community solutions to public safety, Beloved- a King County gun violence awareness campaign in collaboration with Converge Media, and Hope Corp, a city creative economy recovery initiative that collaborated with communities to create murals. 

In 2024, FSS was awarded a contract from Washington State Department of Commerce Community Reinvestment Fund for gun violence prevention through the arts and invested these funds to keep the doors to our safe creative spaces open and accessible and supplement the income of our BIPOC resident artists that provide our free creative programming. That year, we provided over 1,111 hours of free public events and programs to our community through over 342 different drop ins, skill shares, artwalks, open studio sessions, creative marketplaces, workshops, networking and educational events, and pop ups.

Now, OTB is a flourishing ecosystem of three studio spaces and hundreds of homies and small businesses with longstanding roots and legacy plus dope newcomers alike serving thousands in our direct community. Our leadership has emerged directly from the communities we are from and serve and includes an intergenerational alliance of creatives of all disciplines - majority from historically marginalized backgrounds and demographically underrepresented in creative industries.

In the next iteration of growing our mission, we are opening our first fully accessible, public and street level gateway to the hyperlocal creative ecosystem and resources we have been building for the last 5 years, and we are calling on our community, allies, and accomplices to come aboard.