CATCH is a non profit created by a group of NYC organizations to develop collaborative projects that foster the city’s living cultural heritage. CATCH is a consortium of four nationally prominent organizations with almost 100 years combined programming experience in folk arts: Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD), City Lore, Society of the Educational Arts (SEA, a Latino children’s theater) and World Music Institute (WMI).
These groups joined together to (a) develop collaborative projects among the four founding organizations and other groups; and (b) incubate and assist smaller, ethnic-specific groups to develop their own organizational structures and foster the cultural heritages of their respective communities; (c) to seek a permanent physical home for folk arts in New York City. In 2007-2008, the Center for Art, Tradition and Cultural Heritage (CATCH) formally came into existence as an organizational home for the collaborative programming which had taken place between the partners for decades.