Several Anacostia artists and arts leaders have launched a collective that will promote theater, poetry, and performances in the neighborhood from artists who live east of the river on an ongoing basis.

The group, called the Valley Place Arts Collaborative (VPAC), is sponsored by ARCH Development Corporation, a nonprofit that has funded job training and the arts in Anacostia for decades. The new initiative is led by four familiar faces in the neighborhood’s creative community: poet and playwright John Johnson; filmmaker Jason Anderson (who goes by Jay Sun); visual artist Luis Peralta; and Adele Robey, who founded the Anacostia Playhouse and stepped down as director last year after nearly a decade in that role. All four live on or near Valley Place SE, hence the name.

VPAC is still in its very early stages, but in the meantime, Robey is pulling strings and working with former collaborators from her Anacostia Playhouse days.

“I get cranky a little bit when people are like, ‘Oh, Anacostia is the flavor of the month,'” Robey says. “Anacostia’s been the flavor for a long time.”

So far, the group’s funding is coming mostly from ARCH, which expects to funnel about $200,000 into the project to get it started, according to co-founder Duane Gautier. He began discussing the collaborative with the team in December.

Those discussions also came as Gautier was plotting the next steps for ARCH. He and late wife Sharon founded ARCH as a job training center in 1986. A few years in, they transformed it into an organization that sought to promote economic development in Anacostia through arts and culture. ARCH did this, in part, by turning Good Hope Road into a stretch of art-focused properties: the couple opened Honfleur Gallery in 2007, despite some initial pushback from residents who didn’t see how a gallery would help the community; and they converted the ground floor of the job center into the Anacostia Arts Center in 2013. ARCH also gives away $5,000 awards to two “East of the River Distinguished Artists” as part of an annual art show.

But after Sharon passed away last year, ARCH is transitioning. The company sold the Anacostia Arts Center to the Washington Area Community Investment Fund in December, and over the past five years, has sold off its other Anacostia real estate holdings to minority-owned businesses and use the proceeds to invest in the arts, as the East of the River blog detailed in March.

At the same time, Gautier began looking for ways to expand on Sharon’s wishes to fund the arts.

“My wife left a large sum of money to be used for artists in Ward 7 and 8,” Gautier says. “I came to the conclusion that it would be perfect if a local-based organization from Anacostia would take over the arts projects that ARCH started and develop new arts projects.”

He continues: “There’s such a wealth of talent not only in Ward 8 in Anacostia, but also in Ward 7. And it’s been undervalued … What [VPAC] is — it takes it one step further. It creates an organization that can carry on as ARCH disappears.”

For now, most of Valley Place’s programs take place at the Anacostia Arts Center under an agreement with WACIF, and its art exhibits will take place at the Honfleur Gallery, one property ARCH still owns (with a satellite location in Baltimore). Valley Place hopes to expand its programs to other venues over time.

VPAC is still in the process of getting incorporated as a nonprofit organization, but it’s hosting events to build a track record and attract grant funding from foundations and the D.C. government.

The group has already hosted an open mic, a film screening, a show from a Black magician, and a play. It also funds a regular after-school poetry program for local students at Project Create, another arts center in Anacostia. Augustus the Sissy, a VPAC-sponsored show about a troubled high school football prodigy, will run from Sept. 16-18 at the Anacostia Arts Center black box theater.

Poet and performer John Johnson, one of VPAC’s founding members, already staged a performance as part of the program. In previous decades, Johnson remembers taking his mixtapes and poems to the arts community that populated clubs and street corners on U Street to build his confidence. Now, he hopes Anacostia can be that place for budding artists in Ward 8.

There could be some momentum for his vision: D.C. recently awarded the Anacostia Business Improvement District close to $4 million to create a formal arts and culture district, which Johnson thinks will create more resources for artists who want to stay in Southeast D.C. “You want to be able to create art where you live, as opposed to going some other place,” he says.