RACC provides service in five key areas:
Through advocacy, RACC help builds support for a strong arts and culture community.
RACC grants provide artists and arts organizations with financial support.
Our nationally acclaimed public art program integrates a wide range of art in public places. RACC manages Percent for Art programs for the City of Portland and Multnomah County.
RACC provides other community services, including workshops for artists, organizational consulting, and a variety of printed and electronic resources.
RACC supports arts education through an innovative program that integrates arts and culture in the standard curriculum for K–8 students.
General Operating Support provides stable, unrestricted funding for 48 established, professional arts organizations in the region. The City of Portland; Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties; and Work for Art are the primary sources of revenue for these grants.
2.9 Million Total attendance at arts events provided by RACC’s 48 General Operating Support organizations
$86.7 MillionAnnual purchasing and payroll power of RACC’s 48 General Operating Support organizations
$5
The cost of a ticket to many arts events for low-income Oregonians through the
Arts for All program
- Artist Repertory Theatre, $57,576
- Bag & Baggage Productions, $11,600
- Blue Sky Gallery, $13,890
- Bodyvox, $25,546
- Broadway Rose Theatre Company, $36,740
- Cappella Romana, Inc., $13,350
- Chamber Music Northwest, $53,450
- Children's Healing Art Project, $12,760
- Do Jump! Extremely Physical Theatre, $30,396
- Ethos Music Center, $17,700
- Friends of Chamber Music, $21,796
- Hollywood Theatre/Film Action Oregon, $17,970
- Imago Theatre, $30,406
- Independent Publishing Resource Center, $12,136
- Lakewood Center for the Arts, $37,320
- Literary Arts, Inc., $45,726
- Live Wire!, $12,710
- Metropolitan Youth Symphony, $30,986
- Miracle Theatre Group, $30,646
- Northwest Children's Theatre, $28,390
- Northwest Dance Project, $16,000
- NW Documentary Arts & Media, $12,136
- Oregon Ballet Theatre, $85,900
- Oregon Children's Theatre, $60,936
- Oregon Repertory Singers, $26,630
- Oregon Symphony Association, $144,516
- PHAME Academy, $12,136
- Playwrite, Inc., $17,386
- Portland Art Museum, $194,396
- Portland Baroque Orchestra, $25,500
- Portland Center Stage, $91,216
- Portland Chamber Orchestra, $15,710
- Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, $14,090
- Portland Gay Men's Chorus, $16,790
- Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, $29,656
- Portland Opera, $140,716
- Portland Piano International, $15,630
- Portland Taiko, $37,420
- Portland Youth Philharmonic, $31,706
- Profile Theatre Project, $23,360
- Tears of Joy Theatre, $31,966
- The Portland Ballet, $19,166
- Third Angle New Music Ensemble, $11,500
- Third Rail Repertory Theatre, $13,400
- White Bird, $52,116
- Wordstock, Inc., $15,436
- Write Around Portland, $20,796
- Young Audiences of Oregon & SW Washington, $28,050
RACC awarded 22 Opportunity/Emergency Grants in FY13 as a way to assist with several arts organizations’ unanticipated opportunities and emergencies.
Due to funding cuts from the City of Portland, RACC is not currently accepting requests for Opportunity and Emergency grant funding.
- Agnieszka Laska Dancers
- Andisheh Cente
- Blackfish Gallery/Burdock-Burn Art Resources
- Conduit Dance, Inc.
- Creative Music Guild
- Film Action Oregon
- Hellenic-American Cultural Center & Museum
- InterArts
- Kalakendra
- Kukatonan
- Marissa Mission
- Metropolitan Youth Symphony
- Multnomah Arts Center Association
- The Obo Addy Legacy Project
- Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission
- Pacific Crest Sinfonietta
- Portland Boychoir
- Portland Center for the Performing Arts Foundation
- Portland Playhouse
- Print Arts Northwest
- Profile Theatre Project
- Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls
The Artist Fellowship is awarded to one Oregon artist each year, and includes a $20,000 grant to sustain or enhance the artist’s creative process. Fellowships are traditionally awarded in rotating disciplines that include Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Media Arts and Literature.
View a slideshow of all RACC Fellows since 1999.
RACC’s 2013 Fellow in Literature is Sallie Tisdale. She has written everything from short memoirs to books, from personal poems to complex essays. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New Republic, and Salon, and she has published seven books, including Stepping Westward, Women of the Way, The Best Thing I Ever Tasted, and Talk Dirty to Me. Learn more about Sallie’s award
RACC’s arts integration program, The Right Brain Initiative, connects public schools with local teaching artists, coaching them to design classroom arts experiences that enliven subjects like math, science, reading and writing.
This partnership managed by RACC is currently serving nearly 14,000 K–8 students in the Portland metro area. In 2013, Right Brain also provided professional development for more than 300 teachers and other school staff, helping them build the skills to independently weave the arts throughout their curriculum.
This year, the Gresham-Barlow School District became the first school district in the region to connect Right Brain with every elementary school. This, plus the addition of the Corbett School District, brings Right Brain to 49 schools, or over 20% of the K–5, K–6 and K–8 schools in the region.
Right Brain received renewed funding from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2013. The program also developed affiliations with two other national initiatives. Turnaround Arts (TA) is a public-private partnership of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, aiming to turn around student achievement through the arts at the nation’s lowest-performing schools. Right Brain proudly partnered with Portland Public Schools’ King PK–8, one of only eight TA schools in the country, to provide an essential part of its classroom arts programming and professional development for staff.
Add an “A” for arts to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math curriculum, and you’ll make STEAM. Right Brain piloted STEAM programming at Jackson and Quatama Elementary Schools, both located in the “Silicon Forest” area of Oregon’s Washington County. Students used the arts to illuminate physics, ecology, geology and much more. Right Brain also worked in collaboration with US Representative Suzanne Bonamici, a leader in the Congressional STEAM Caucus, to build major awareness for the movement.
Read more about Right Brain at TheRightBrainInitiative.org, or download the 2013 Progress Report.
Right Brain Partner Schools 2013–14:
Corbett School District
CAPS at Springdale
Gresham-Barlow School District
Deep Creek Elementary, East Gresham Elementary, East Orient Elementary, Hall Elementary, Highland Elementary, Hogan Cedars Elementary, Hollydale Elementary, Kelly Creek Elementary, North Gresham Elementary, Powell Valley Elementary, West Gresham Elementary
Hillsboro School District
Free Orchards Elementary, Imlay Elementary, Jackson Elementary, Lincoln Street Elementary, Minter Bridge Elementary, Quatama Elementary, WL Henry Elementary
North Clackamas Schools
Ardenwald Elementary, Bilquist Elementary, Concord Elementary, Duncan Elementary, Happy Valley Elementary, Linwood Elementary, Milwaukie/El Puente Elementary, Oregon Trail Elementary, Riverside Elementary, Scouters Mountain Elementary, Spring Mountain Elementary, Sunnyside Elementary, View Acres Elementary
Oregon Trail School District
Naas Elementary, Oregon Trail Academy
Portland Public Schools
Beach PK-8, Boise-Eliot/Humboldt PK–8, Hayhurst Elementary, James John Elementary, King PK–8, Lewis Elementary, Markham Elementary, Metropolitan Learning Center, Ockley Green/Chief Joseph K–8, Rigler Elementary, Roseway Heights K–8, Sitton Elementary, Vestal K–8, Whitman Elementary, Woodlawn PK–8
Public art enlivens urban and rural landscapes and promotes dialogue among people of all ages and backgrounds. Through a variety of methods, RACC helps acquire and maintain community-owned artworks in public places. The Public Art Advisory Committee oversees RACC’s public art program, which is among the oldest and most highly regarded in the country.
Percent-for-Art Highlights:
The City of Portland and Multnomah County each have a “2% for Art” ordinance that funds the creation and maintenance of public art.
- Artists Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio completed Inversion: Plus/Minus, a series of large-scale sculptures. These towering lattices of weathering steel evoke the ghosts of old warehouses in Industrial Southeast Portland.
- May 17 was the grand opening of the new Fields Neighborhood Park at NW 10th & Overton, which included the unveiling of Christine Bourdette’s Snails— six bronze sculptures sited along the path that encircles the expansive grassy area.
- RACC and artist Jonathan Marrs installed a series of photographs at Fire Station 18 in Southwest Portland. Four diptychs and two single photographs reflect actions and textures related to the firefighting crews who work there.
- Dan Corson’s Nepenthes, a series of four solar-illuminated sculptures along NW Davis Street, were installed in the second week of May. This Portland Mall Project increases pedestrian connectivity to Old Town/Chinatown from the Pearl District and vice versa.
- On September 30, RACC, with Portland Streetcar Inc., dedicated Jorge Pardo’s Streetcar Stop for Portland, a multifaceted structure of steel, glass, wood and fiberglass on North Weidler adjacent to the Rose Quarter.
- In June 2013, the Public Art Network of Americans for the Arts named Dekumstruction, a sculpture in Northeast Portland by Buster Simpson and Peg Butler, one of 50 outstanding public art projects in the United States in 2012. This cleverly designed bike rack also reclaims runoff from adjacent rooftops and releases it into a nearby bioswale.
Murals:
For artists interested in painting a mural in the City of Portland, RACC’s Public Art Murals Program offers up to $10,000 in matching funding for qualifying projects. Building owners are required to provide easements that allow the mural to be added to the city’s public art collection and remain in place for no less than five years. On October 12, RACC hosted a workshop at Teatro Milagro in Southeast Portland to help artists and community members understand the ways and means of getting an outdoor mural done in the city.
Murals completed in 2012–13 include:
- St. Johns Mural in North Portland by Carson Ellis, produced by Whitney Anderson
- North Tabor Mural in Northeast Portland by SpaceCraft: Mission to Arts (Maxwell Humpres, Jakub Jerzy Kucharczyk, Matthew Allen Wooldridge)
- Bella Venti-tre e Thurman in Northwest Portland by Larry Kangas
- Woodstock Mural in Southeast Portland by Mike Lawrence, produced by Heidi Schultz
Portable Works:
In addition to large, permanently sited commissions, RACC has managed collections of two- and three-dimensional artworks for the City of Portland and Multnomah County for more than 30 years. Over 1,000 portable artworks now rotate throughout 36 city and county buildings, including 17 new works that were recently purchased for the Visual Chronicle of Portland, a subset of the Portable Works that focuses on works that capture the zeitgeist of the city.
Portland Building Installation Space
RACC maintains a space for interactive and experimental media installations in the lobby of the Portland Building. The program has featured 155 installations since it started in 1994. Exhibits appearing in 2013 included:
- Radiate, by Margot Myers
- Tally, by Nathan Sandberg
- Waiting Room, by Nicholas Norman
- A Landscape, by Jacob Sorenson
- Welcome, by Patricia Vazquez Gomez and Betty Marin
- Queering Portlandia, by Anthony Hudson
- Untitled, Photoswatch 2, by Michael Sell
- Forecast, by Paula Rebsom and Grant Hottle
- As you make your bed, so must you lie in it?, by Ariana Jacob
- all the art that fits, the annual city/county employee exhibition
Artist Residencies:
RACC’s public art in residence program, intersections, encourages artists to develop new ways of creating socially engaged, interactive art experiences in community settings. In 2013, the BCCTV artist collective of Carl Diehl, Ariana Jacob, Joan Lundell, Mack McFarland and Jeffrey Richardson led a series of video production workshops at Bud Clark Commons with individuals who have experienced homelessness. The project culminated in a free screening at the Hollywood Theatre of workshop participants’ short works that included documentary, comedy and animation.
Also in 2013, artists Garrick Imatani and Kaia Sand began their residency at the Portland Archives & Record Center with a goal of understanding surveillance files the Portland Police Bureau gathered on activist groups in the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s. They will create a series of installations and public interactions as part of their residency.
Both of these projects are funded by the City of Portland Percent-for-Art program, which RACC administers.
Public Art Maintenance:
Since 1989, public art maintenance funding has been set aside for percent-for-art commissions to assist with their future care. But what about works made before 1989? A significant number of historical sculptures in the City collection have no maintenance funding at all. In times of tight budgets creative solutions and collaborations are required, and this summer RACC was pleased to be able to leverage its resources with a Cultural Development Grant from the Oregon Cultural Trust to undertake surface restoration projects on the George Washington monument at NE Sandy and Alameda and the Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste sculpture in Washington Park. The grant also funded a professional condition assessment for the iconic Portlandia sculpture on the façade of the Portland Building.The assessment will help RACC develop a detailed conservation plan for this symbol of our city.
RACC’s extensive public art maintenance role was captured for Oregon Public Broadcasting in a thoughtful story by Arts & Life producer Dan Sadowsky.
RACC advocates for increased public and private investments in the arts at the local, state and national level. In 2013 RACC supported the work of the Cultural Advocacy Coalition to extend the Oregon Cultural Trust Tax Credit through 2020.
RACC also supported the Creative Advocacy Network and its campaign for “Schools and Arts Together,” which resulted in a new Arts Education and Access Fund, approved by 62% of Portland voters in November 2012. Proceeds of the new income tax will pay for one art or music teacher for every 500 K–5 students in the city’s public schools and numerous arts education and access activities throughout Portland.
For more information visit www.racc.org/aeaf.
62%
Portland voters approving a new Arts Education & Access Fund
“In today’s business world, there’s no such thing as too much creativity or too much innovation.” — Jeff Harvey, President and CEO, Burgerville
$4,689,631
Work for Art’s seven-year fundraising total
Sources of Revenue
Work For Art 2012-2013 Campaign
|
| Employees |
39% |
| Other Individuals |
5% |
| Company Matches and Corporate Gifts |
13% |
| Public and Private Matching Challenge Fund |
42% |
| Other |
1% |
Work for Art’s 2012–13 annual report is available here and a complete list of donors is available online at workforart.org/donors.
The 2013–14 campaign is now underway, with a goal of raising $775,000. Jeff Harvey is serving as honorary chair for a second year, supported by co-chair Mike Golub, COO of the Portland Timbers. The campaign got a major boost in December, when Work for Art received $50,000 from Cambia Health Solutions, its largest corporate gift to date.
Work for Art, RACC’s workplace giving program that raises money and awareness for local arts organizations, raised a total of $764,309 in the campaign ending June 30, 2013. Work for Art’s seven-year fundraising total has grown to $4,689,631.
The 2012–13 Work for Art campaign was chaired by Jeff Harvey, president and CEO of Burgerville. “It is a great thing to celebrate arts and culture in our communities,” he says. “In today’s business world, there’s no such thing as too much creativity or too much innovation. Investing in a vital arts community is the same as committing to deep and long-term investment in the vitality and innovation of business.” For the third consecutive year, Burgerville hosted a special “Feed the Arts” Day at all 39 of its restaurants, raising $15,000 in addition to the company’s employee giving campaign.
Portland General Electric was the top employee giving campaign in 2012–13, raising a total of $83,530 for Work for Art. Burgerville had the most employee donors (410) of any company, and Portland Center Stage was acknowledged for raising the most money among nonprofit organizations ($2,442). Work for Art also welcomed new campaigns from Laika, Metropolitan Group, Bank of the Cascades, and Norm Thompson Outfitters.
Thank you to all of the companies that participated in Work for Art in 2012–13:
Top 10 companies, $6,000–84,000:
- Portland General Electric*
- NW Natural*
- Burgerville*
- The Standard*
- OHSU*
- State of Oregon*
- City of Portland*
- Zimmer Gunsul Frasca*
- Multnomah County*
- Stoel Rives*
$3,001–6,000
- Boora Architects*
- KeyBank*
- McDonald Jacobs*
- Metro*
- Portland Public Schools*
- RACC Staff & Board*
- Tonkon Torp*
- Umpqua Bank*
$1,501–3,000
- Axium*
- Federal Workers*
- Intel*
- Norris, Beggs & Simpson Companies*
- Oregon Children’s Theatre*
- Perkins & Co*
- Port of Portland*
- Portland Center Stage*
- Portland Opera*
- Washington County*
- Wieden+Kennedy
Up to $1,500
- Aldrich Kilbride and Tatone*
- Atraz Johnson
- Bank of the Cascades*
- The Boeing Company*
- Broadway Rose Theatre Company*
- Bullivant Houser Bailey*
- Business for Culture & the Arts*
- Cambia Health Solutions*
- City of Beaverton*
- City of Lake Oswego*
- Davis Wright Tremaine*
- Green Bench
- JPMorgan Chase*
- Kaiser Permanente*
- Laika*
- Lane Powell*
- Metropolitan Group*
- Moda Health (ODS Companies)*
- Norm Thompson Outfitters*
- North Clackamas Schools*
- OMSI*
- Oregon Ballet Theatre*
- Pacific University*
- PICA*
- Pop Art*
- Portland Art Museum*
- The Portland Clinic*
- Portland Timbers*
- Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt*
- Tears of Joy Theatre*
- Therapeutic Associates
- Travel Portland*
- Turtledove Clemens*
- The Upper Limits
- Vernier Software & Technology
- Wells Fargo Bank*
- Young Audiences*
(*) denotes companies with employee giving campaigns
