Founded in 1975, Real Art Ways is one of the country’s early alternative arts spaces, presenting and producing new and innovative work by emerging and established artists, and serving as a crucial connection for audiences and artists regionally, nationally and internationally. The organization has sustained itself through committed support for new ideas and disciplines and has steadily built a diverse and unique audience that crosses lines of race, sexual orientation, economics and age.

Real Art Ways is a contemporary art space with a special link to its own community. With films, concerts, performances, readings, exhibitions and a lounge where people gather before and after events, Real Art Ways is a unique place for people of widely varying backgrounds to come together around art and ideas. Depending on the event, the audience at Real Art Ways can range from suburban grandmothers to transgendered patrons, from area business people to urban teens, from well-respected artists to inquisitive children.