Erie Labor Temple

06/17/2026

✏️ TOMORROW NIGHT → SKETCHBOOK NIGHT ✏️

The Erie Labor Temple Soft Social Series continues Thursday.

Sketchbook Night is a relaxed weekly gathering built around drawing, visual journaling, doodling, illustration, observation, experimentation, and creative curiosity.

Bring:

✏️ Pencils
🖊️ Pens
🎨 Markers
📓 Sketchbooks
📄 Loose paper
🧠 Strange ideas

No experience required.

No portfolio required.

No need to call yourself an artist.

Just show up.

The goal isn't perfection.

The goal is participation.

Thursday • 6–9 PM

Take me to the Temple.

Art Works Here.

Historic labor infrastructure retooled into modern creative infrastructure.

06/17/2026

GALLERY NIGHT AT THE TEMPLE.

Friday, June 26, Erie Labor Temple opens its doors for Erie Art Museum’s Gallery Night.

Art. History. Community. Work under voltage.

Come see what is taking shape inside the former labor temple at 1701 State Street, Erie, PA

Friday, June 26
5–10 PM
Erie Labor Temple

Art Works Here.

06/16/2026

⚡ TOMORROW NIGHT → SLOW MAKE NIGHT ⚡

The Erie Labor Temple Soft Social Series continues Wednesday with one of our favorite weekly gatherings.

Slow Make Night.

A low-pressure evening built around hand work, creative practice, and the increasingly radical act of making something without needing permission.

Bring:

✂️ Sewing
📓 Journaling
🧶 Knitting
📚 Bookbinding
🎨 Sketching
🖇️ Collage
🛠️ Repair work
👾 Strange little projects

No experience required.

No artistic credentials required.

No need to know anyone.

Just show up.

The Soft Socials were built around a simple idea:

A room.
A reason to gather.
Other people doing the same.

Wednesday • 6–9 PM

Art Works Here.

Historic labor infrastructure retooled into modern creative infrastructure.

06/15/2026

TOMORROW NIGHT → WRITER'S NIGHT

The Erie Labor Temple Soft Social Series continues Tuesday with Writer's Night.

A weekly low-pressure writing session for:

• Novelists
• Poets
• Journalists
• Essayists
• Playwrights
• Screenwriters
• Curious beginners
• Lifelong word nerds

No forced participation.
No networking theater.
No need to perform being interesting.

Just a room, a reason to show up, and other people doing the same. The Soft Socials were built around exactly that idea.

Tuesday • 6–9 PM

Take me to the Temple.

Art Works Here.

Historic labor infrastructure retooled into modern creative infrastructure.

06/13/2026

Looking for local businesses to make embroidered patches for ELT. Recommendations!?

06/13/2026

We’ve made the call.

The Erie Local 814 patch/coin/graphic will move forward as:
CREATIVE WORKERS UNION

That word was not chosen casually.

Erie Labor Temple lives inside labor history. The building itself carries the memory of working people, public life, organizing, repair, argument, solidarity, and civic use. ELT is being built from that inheritance into modern creative infrastructure.

So yes: we are keeping Union.

But we are also being clear.

Erie Local 814 Creative Workers Union is not a certified labor union, collective-bargaining unit, or legal bargaining representative.

It does not represent workers in workplace negotiations, grievances, contracts, or labor disputes.

It is a cultural solidarity identity.

A house mark.

A creative-worker signal.

A way to say that artists, writers, makers, performers, musicians, designers, instructors, craftspeople, and cultural workers are workers — and that creative labor deserves dignity, infrastructure, mutual support, and public respect.

We heard the concern. We respect it. That is why the guardrails will travel with the mark wherever it appears.

This is not imitation labor.

This is labor memory carried forward into creative infrastructure.

Art Works Here.

06/10/2026

ELT will open at 6 PM today.

06/08/2026

I’m leaning away from both “Union” and “Guild” for various reasons. I’m thinking, and hear me out, “Creative Workers Assembly.” It still has the union charge to it without the romanticized or fantasy feel of a guild (yes, I spent too much time around the SCA and LARPers). It does run with the solidarity and formal work ethos of ELT, though. Keeping with the Erie Local 814 adds to the union feel, without being disrespectful to officially organized labor.

Thoughts!?

Erie Local 814 Creative Workers Assembly is the solidarity identity for artists, makers, writers, designers, and cultural workers at Erie Labor Temple. We treat creative labor as real labor; organizing around mutual aid, shared infrastructure, skill building, and working-class creative culture. Erie Local 814 is not a formal bargaining union or labor representative; it is a cultural and community hub rooted in historic labor infrastructure and retooled for contemporary creative workers. We respect and learn from organized labor, and we invite union-aligned and union-curious creators to build with us under the banner: Art Works Here.

Send a message to learn more

06/07/2026

I need the creative hivemind for this one.

We’ve been developing an Erie Labor Temple patch concept for Erie Local 814, our imagined creative workers’ house identity inside ELT. The idea is rooted in labor history, creative solidarity, mutual support, and the belief that artists, writers, makers, performers, designers, musicians, craftspeople, and cultural workers deserve language with backbone.

The design currently has two versions:

CREATIVE WORKERS UNION
and
CREATIVE WORKERS GUILD

I’ll be honest. I am very attached to Creative Workers Union.

Not because Erie Local 814 is currently a legally recognized union. It is not. Not because we are trying to mislead anyone. We are not. But because the word union carries the spirit of what Erie Labor Temple is trying to build: people standing together around creative labor, shared resources, working-class culture, and the idea that art is not just content. Art is work.

That said, someone I respect raised a thoughtful concern privately. Their point was that “union” is not casual language. It means something specific. It comes with real expectations, political weight, and legal/social meaning. They also pointed out that “Local 814” is already associated with an existing union elsewhere, which could create confusion.

That is fair enough to take seriously.

So I’m opening this up.

Should ELT keep the stronger, more labor-forward language of Creative Workers Union, with clear public explanation that this is an identity/merch/ethos concept and not a formal union?

Or should we use Creative Workers Guild, which is probably safer, softer, and more historically aligned with artists and makers, but maybe loses some of the working-class charge that makes ELT feel like ELT?

I’m not looking for a pile-on. I’m looking for thoughtful, informed, generous feedback from artists, union folks, labor historians, designers, organizers, makers, and anyone who understands that words matter.

This is a real Erie Labor Temple ethos decision.

What do you think?

UNION or GUILD? And why?

Art Works Here.

06/06/2026

Power is out at ELT today...