A performing arts legacy is the record of an artist’s or organization’s creative work, relationships, productions, stories, and impact. It includes not only media and documents, but also the context that makes those materials meaningful.
Because performing arts history is easy to lose. A digital legacy protects vulnerable materials, makes them searchable, and turns them into useful resources for education, fundraising, marketing, community engagement, and restaging works. A living archive is a dynamic digital collection that grows as stories, media, and records are added. Unlike a static storage repository, it helps people actively use legacy materials for storytelling, public engagement, research, education, and organizational growth. Artists, alumni, educators, researchers, donors, families, audiences, cultural institutions, and performing arts organizations all benefit when creative histories are organized, connected, and accessible. A library or archive may preserve selected materials, but access, digitization, context, and ongoing use can be limited. In many cases, donated collections remain in their original analog form—paper, photographs, programs, tapes, and other physical materials—for years unless funding is also available to digitize, catalog, and make them accessible. Donors may also give up certain rights or practical control, and researchers often need to make an appointment or visit in person to access the collection. ChromaDiverse offers a different approach: it helps artists and organizations maintain greater control of their materials, improve access and use, connect people and productions, and activate archival content for storytelling, fundraising, education, research, and community visibility. Its mission is to help democratize performing arts history through the internet, so someone anywhere in the world can discover, study, and understand an organization’s history and impact. ChromaDiverse is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to helping performing arts organizations and artists preserve, celebrate, and amplify their legacies online. CurtainConnect is an initiative created and powered by ChromaDiverse—a living network for the performing arts where individuals and organizations can share stories, build profiles, document affiliations, and connect personal journeys to broader organizational histories. For artists, a CurtainConnect profile can also serve as a richer, more dynamic artistic portfolio—bringing together credits, affiliations, media, milestones, and legacy materials in one shareable place. This makes it easier to present a fuller picture of an artist’s career, reconnect with past colleagues, support new collaborations, and explore future opportunities. CD DigitalVault is ChromaDiverse’s digital asset management solution for performing arts organizations. It helps centralize, structure, secure, search, and activate archival materials such as videos, photographs, programs, oral histories, documents, and production records. Organizations can maintain an internal collection for private research, administration, preservation, and rights-sensitive materials, while also choosing which selected items are made public through CurtainConnect or other public-facing uses. This gives each organization control over what audiences, alumni, fans, researchers, donors, and collaborators can see. DigitalVault also supports rights management by helping organizations track ownership, permissions, usage restrictions, release status, and other rights-related details so materials can be preserved and shared responsibly. When used strategically, it can become a powerful resource for fundraising, marketing, teaching, re-staging productions, anniversary campaigns, donor stewardship, and renewed connections with alumni, audiences, and fans. DigitalVault supports the organization’s back-end collection management, while CurtainConnect provides a public-facing way to share associated artist stories, profiles, and highlights with alumni, audiences, researchers, and the broader community. Many artistic contributions—especially those of underrepresented artists, non-featured performers, staff, designers, crew members, educators, and community contributors—have historically gone undocumented. ChromaDiverse helps make those contributions visible, connected, and enduring. It is a plan to preserve an individual’s or organization’s history. Start with a clear chronology: founding information, major milestones, repertoire, productions, venues, artists, staff, collaborators, and available programs or media. This creates the backbone that other materials can connect to over time. Begin with the essentials: training, affiliations, roles, performances, creative collaborators, key milestones, media, and the stories that explain what the work meant and why it mattered. Yes. CurtainConnect allows you to link your individual profile to the organization profiles of companies, schools, or productions you have been affiliated with, creating a connected history across the platform. By maintaining an up-to-date profile, you increase your visibility within the global arts community. Your profile provides a quick way to share your verified background, discover potential collaborators, connect with past colleagues, and uncover new project, performance, or mentorship opportunities. Visit CurtainConnect.com, sign up for a free account, add your background, media, and affiliations, and begin exploring the community. Most people can create a basic profile in about 30–50 minutes. From there, the profile becomes a living artistic portfolio that the individual can easily manage over time, with sections that can be modified, expanded, or updated as new credits, media, connections, and milestones are added. Profiles can also be easily shared with people outside of CurtainConnect through a custom URL, making it simple to include the profile in email signatures, grant materials, audition packets, proposals, social media, websites, and other professional outreach. Check out these profiles who have reached the final tier of profile completion – Standing in your Spotlight: Yes. Organizations can establish an official presence on CurtainConnect to showcase their institutional history, highlight key milestones, celebrate alumni and past artists, and maintain a public record of their ongoing impact. For organizations requiring a more robust, institutional-grade system, CurtainConnect offers DigitalVault. DigitalVault powers the organization’s back-end digital asset management, allowing institutions to centralize, structure, and secure large volumes of media, administrative records, and historical collections while seamlessly publishing selected highlights to their public CurtainConnect profile. DigitalVault handles high-resolution performance videos, production photography, oral histories, programs, posters, administrative documents, press coverage, correspondence, and marketing collateral. Having instant access to well-organized historical assets makes it easy to assemble grant proposals, pull media for donor stewardship, and launch anniversary campaigns (10th, 25th, 50th+ milestones) through exhibitions, retrospective videos, and commemorative publications. No. The system is designed for intuitive use by general administrative staff, executive leadership, interns, and volunteers. ChromaDiverse also provides guidance, onboarding support, and training in archival best practices. Implementation timelines and pricing depend on the size of the collection, digitization needs, and desired customization. While the overall project can feel like “the elephant in the room,” ChromaDiverse draws on years of experience with dance organizations and legacy collections to help institutions focus first on the materials and workflows that can deliver useful short-term benefits. The project can be approached one manageable “bite” at a time while still producing early value for fundraising, marketing, teaching, preservation, and community engagement. To keep costs reasonable for participating organizations, ChromaDiverse actively seeks funding and support for all of its initiatives, including the DigitalVault. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we also partner with institutions to identify and co-write grants that may help cover or offset setup costs. Yes. Through the CurtainConnect network, organizations can invite alumni, former dancers, and community members to submit photos, stories, and records, expanding the organization’s archive through crowd-sourced history. Security and preservation are fundamental. DigitalVault includes configurable permission levels, access controls, secure cloud backups, and digital preservation protocols to safeguard institutional knowledge against staff turnover, data loss, or media degradation. Yes. ChromaDiverse offers tailored demonstrations for organizational leaders and boards to showcase how DigitalVault structures collections, streamlines search, and integrates with public-facing CurtainConnect profiles. Performers, choreographers, directors, designers, musicians, educators, administrators, technicians, production staff, and other performing arts contributors can use CurtainConnect to document and share their artistic journeys. You can include biographical information, training, credits, affiliations, productions, roles, collaborators, media, milestones, stories, and links that help present a fuller picture of your creative work and legacy. Yes. Your CurtainConnect profile is designed as a living artistic portfolio. You can manage it yourself and continue adding, editing, or refining sections as your career evolves, new materials surface, or new opportunities emerge. Each profile can be shared through a custom URL, making it easy to include in email signatures, grant applications, audition materials, proposals, websites, social media, and outreach to presenters, collaborators, funders, educators, and fans. By linking your profile to organizations, productions, schools, colleagues, and creative collaborators, CurtainConnect helps make your artistic network more visible. This can support reconnection, collaboration, discovery, mentorship, research, and new professional opportunities. ChromaDiverse’s support for individual artist profile creation, management, and sharing is made possible through donations and grants. This philanthropic model helps reduce barriers for artists and supports ChromaDiverse’s mission to make performing arts legacies more visible, connected, and accessible. Understanding Performing Arts Legacies
About ChromaDiverse, CurtainConnect, and DigitalVault
Starting a Legacy Project
Organization Profiles & DigitalVault Solutions
Individual Artist Profiles on CurtainConnect
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