Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis, Illinois on September 29, 1967, providing arts education to local youth.
On September 29, 1967, Katherine Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis, Illinois, extending her lifelong commitment to arts education and community empowerment to one of the most economically disadvantaged cities in the United States.
The center offered training in dance, music, drama, and the humanities to local youth, many of whom faced significant social and economic barriers. Dunham's approach embedded principles of African diasporic culture and identity into the curriculum, seeking to instill pride, discipline, and creative expression in a community affected by poverty, racial segregation, and civic neglect.
This initiative represented a natural extension of Dunham's belief that dance and the arts could serve as tools of social transformation, not merely entertainment. She often described her work in East St. Louis as a continuation of her anthropological commitment to using cultural knowledge in service of community upliftment.
The Training Center became a cornerstone of Dunham's later-career activism, providing generations of young people with access to arts training and cultural education they might not otherwise have received. Her work in East St. Louis left a lasting legacy, and the associated Katherine Dunham Museum and Dynamic Museum continue to preserve her collections and mission in the city to this day, cementing her impact well beyond the performing arts world into community development and social justice.