Ned Smith Center For Nature And Art

Special nature and arts events at the Ned Smith Center attracted more than 5,000 attendees in 2024, including 2,700 at the annual Nature & Arts Festival held at MYO Park in Millersburg and 2,300 at indoor and outdoor concerts and free youth ballet and Shakespeare performances held in the Centers Ned Smith Gallery and DeSoto Amphitheater for the Performing Arts. These events advance our mission by fostering community engagement, celebrating the connection between nature and the arts, and providing accessible cultural experiences for audiences of all ages.

The Ned Smith Centers educational programming engages participants with nature and inspires curiosity and appreciation for the natural world. The Centers educational programs reached more than 1,200 students across Dauphin County and surrounding areas through on- and off-site environmental education programs aligned with Pennsylvania Academic Standards. In addition to school-based programs designed to support classroom learning, the Center offered summer nature and arts camps to more than 200 individuals, engaged more than 40 families through homeschool days, and educated nearly 70 participants through the Centers series of free Discovery Series workshops for all ages.

NSCNA continued its 28th year of northern saw-whet owl banding at three long-term sites in PA, netting just under 500 owls and deploying 20 nanotag transmitters as part of Project Owlnet, a continent-wide tracking project. The Center also advanced snowy owl research through Project SNOWstorm, tagging juvenile owls in the Canadian Arctic and publishing the first global population estimate for the species. More than 90 volunteers contributed 5,000+ hours to these research efforts.

Promote an awareness of and appreciation for the art of Ned Smith and other wildlife artists by presenting an annual art auction.