RACC Blog

Kaiser Permanente, The Standard and ZGF Architects win top prizes at Work for Art’s Battle of the Bands

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PORTLAND, ORE — Seven employee bands competed in Work for Art’s first annual Battle of the Bands, which drew more than 400 music fans to the Crystal Ballroom on Thursday night. Celebrity judges Christopher Brown, Steve Pringle and Rindy Ross awarded the top prize – best company band – to Pencil Skirt Paula and The Straight Edge Rulers, from ZGF Architects. The Best Showmanship prize went to Kaiser Permanente’s 1980s cover band, Members Only.

The Audience Favorite award, as determined by the band that raised the most money from the audience, went to The Standard’s Smoke Before Fire. In all more than $75,000 was raised through event sponsorships, ticket sales, a silent auction, a raffle and other cash donations.

Kaiser Permanente’s 1980s cover band, Members Only.

Members Only (Kaiser Permanente), photo by Erica Ann Photography.

All event proceeds will help Work for Art draw closer to its fundraising goal of $1 million by June 30. Work for Art is a program of the Regional Arts & Culture Council that raises money and awareness for local arts and culture organizations, primarily through workplace giving. RACC distributes all campaign proceeds to more than 100 local nonprofit organizations – including Oregon Children’s Theatre, Ethos Music Center, Portland Opera and the Children’s Healing Art Project.

The Standard’s Smoke Before Fire.

The Standard’s Smoke Before Fire.

Battle of the Bands was the first-ever public fundraising event for Work for Art, which is now in its tenth year. The event was emceed by Joe Vithayathil of KPTV Fox 12 Oregon, and by singer-songwriter Merideth Kaye Clarke. The Brothers Jam, led by BodyVox artistic director Jamey Hampton, opened the show, and one of the Timbers Army bands, Greenhorn, played the final set.

Other competing bands included The Legal Limit (Tonkon Torp), The Red Keys (KeyBank), Larry and the Lightbulbs (PGE), and Dystopia (Burgerville). Companies that are interested in competing in next year’s Battle should contact Jeff Hawthorne, Director of Community Engagement for the Regional Arts & Culture Council, at jhawthorne@racc.org, 503-823-5258.

To make a donation that will help Work for Art reach its million-dollar goal, visit workforart.org.

Celebrity judges Christopher Brown, Rindy Ross and Steve Pringle. Photo by Erica Ann Photography.

Celebrity judges Christopher Brown, Rindy Ross and Steve Pringle. Photo by Erica Ann Photography.

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The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) provides grants for artists, nonprofit organizations and schools in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties; manages an internationally acclaimed public art program; raises money and awareness for the arts through Work for Art; convenes forums, networking events and other community gatherings; provides workshops and other forms of technical assistance for artists; and oversees a program to integrate arts and culture into the standard curriculum in public schools through The Right Brain Initiative. RACC values a diversity of artistic and cultural experiences and is working to build a community in which everyone can participate in culture, creativity and the arts. For more information visit racc.org.

Patty Burkett responds

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Patty Burkett (Candidate for Mayor) responded on May 11, 2016:

(1) In what specific ways have you supported arts and culture in Portland?

My Beloved late Mother Maxine, was a brilliant and very Loving Soul! We were her Whole
Life, and as her children, we were expected to contribute to the Arts. We most assuredly did. My
brother, sisters, and me have been very Blessed with a Mom that knew the artistry of her son and
daughters. She encouraged so many souls throughout her lifetime. She learned to play Eubie Blake
style Ragtime; from Mr. Blake himself. She was 8 years old. It was 1926. Her grandparents owned a
working farm and boarding house on their property outside Mason City, Iowa. None of the hotels in
town would allow Asian, Black, Gay, Lesbian or Hispanic artists to rest. My greatgrandmother,
Ella apparently frequently stated, “Their money is just as good as anyone’s!” Plus, entertainment into the wee hours of the mornings! And so, my Mom met Mr. Blake only once! She said he was so kind! She played Ragtime for the rest of her life! My older sister Jerilynn was frequently on the local television program in Portland, “Stars of Tomorrow”. She sings high soprano and has been compared in musical style to famous chanteuse Jane Powell; also a Portlander! My brother Norman a trombone player and high volume Wagner enthusiast! My younger sister Bonnie, a magical natural Shakespearean quality thespian since very young childhood. She performed as a child and adult with Children’s Theatre programs in Portland. One of my fondest memories is participating; in the 1950’s with my sister, as very little girls, dressed beautifully in seamstress quality matching fluffy dresses, exquisitely sewn by our Mother. Specifically for audience participation in the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival Recitals at Washington Park; when the cherry blossoms are exploding in beauteous shades of pink blossoms throughout the city! I can still see and hear the snapping of their fans in unison, dancing in the warm Spring evening air, with absolutely stunning women in full regalia of traditional Japanese costume. Precious, in so many more ways to me; as an adult. I could riff on our involvements within multiple pages.

(2) Artists and arts organizations add measurable value to our region’s economy, our education system and our quality of life, and yet there are a number of pressing needs in our community that often compete for attention and investment. What is the Mayor’s proper role in supporting arts and culture in the region?

Unconditional support! Art is truly the Heart of Everyone! I am confident that many more
Portlanders and Friends of Portland, will be supporting the arts throughout the globe when, they are schooled correctly, on how to correctly pay their Gift (and GenerationSkipping Transfer) Taxes. To have the astronomical luxury of supporting one’s special craft financially, in real time, is so
imperative. I am quite certain that many more artists will be thriving in a resurgence of a true
Renaissance of the Arts everywhere! The rewards are stratospheric!

(3) The region’s affordability is a serious concern for all of us, including artists and artsrelated businesses. What are your plans for making housing and creative spaces more affordable?

Teaching the People of their true value and worth in our society! Includes the constructs of
Uniform Commercial Code specifically. Marvelous! These assets can be processed quite easily
within 90 days or less for anyone 18 years of age and older (children birth to 18, are within the
constructs of grandparents tax issues). Thus, generationskipping defined. The vast majority of the
People have no clue as to how to pay their obligations correctly according to federal laws since at
least 1933. The rewards are unbelievably phenomenal!

(4) Are there other unmet needs when it comes to shaping Portland’s arts and culture policy for the future? If so, what steps would you take to help ensure those needs are met, and how should they be funded?

I am certain there are. One of my favorite ideas is university quality degrees in Symbology!
Our world is filled with ancient symbology. It is important to recognize and be aware of the meanings of the symbolic constructs surrounding us in our historic sites, commerce,works, and arts in everyday activities.I will need to school myself on what priorities are most pressing to the Council. I am confident that we will shine even more as a destination location! I especially want to encourage older Portlanders and younger children to be more involved in all of the arts. I know from observation and familial ties that art is extremely important in virtually every theraputic discipline. Many of us benefit so instinctually from the arts. This is the real SPIRIT of being a City of Art Lovers!

(5) The Arts Education & Access Fund, or arts tax , has delivered on its promise of providing arts specialists for all K5 schools in Portland, but the fund hasn’t generated enough revenue to support as many grants for arts and culture organizations as envisioned. If elected, would you take any steps to modify the arts tax, improve administration of it, and/or fulfill the voters’ vision of supporting arts education and access through other means?

As I have shared above, there is NO LIMIT on what we can accomplish! I really want to
intertwine the RACC mission, in place, within every single one of our 95 Neighborhoods. Not to
mention that our Beloved sons and daughters really need inspiration from adults on how to build on their inherent desire to express themselves; particularly our darling children that need love, attention and unconditional support. Everything feels stressful now. Life Affirming is, indeed, the Clarion!

Back to Candidates’ page.

The Right Brain Initiative receives funding from National Endowment for the Arts to catalyze change in public schools

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The Right Brain Initiative has received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to deliver systemic and equitable arts programming to local K-8 schools. Right Brain, a program of the Regional Arts & Culture Council, works in partnership with local school districts to transform learning through robust arts programming that integrates with core curriculum. This is the fifth grant the Initiative has earned from the NEA.

“The arts are all around us, enhancing our lives in ways both subtle and obvious, expected and unexpected,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Supporting projects like this one from The Right Brain Initiative offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”

Right Brain invests in the professional capital of its partner schools by providing educators with the tools to seamlessly blend the arts with all other subject areas. The grant will help Right Brain bring its four-year hands-on professional development program to more than 1,200 area teachers, arts specialists, principals and teaching artists in the 2016-17 school year. Through collaboration between Right Brain teaching artists and classroom teachers, the program will serve more than 26,000 K-8 students in urban, suburban and rural communities of Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties, Oregon.

The NEA’s Art Works grants support the creation and presentation of work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement through 13 arts disciplines or fields. This award is part of $82 million distributed by the NEA to fund local arts projects across the nation. To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring16. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov.

The Right Brain Initiative receives funding from National Endowment for the Arts to catalyze change in public schools

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PORTLAND, ORE — The Right Brain Initiative has received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to deliver systemic and equitable arts programming to local K-8 schools. Right Brain, a program of the Regional Arts & Culture Council, works in partnership with local school districts to transform learning through robust arts programming that integrates with core curriculum. This is the fifth grant the Initiative has earned from the NEA.

“The arts are all around us, enhancing our lives in ways both subtle and obvious, expected and unexpected,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Supporting projects like this one from The Right Brain Initiative offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”

Right Brain invests in the professional capital of its partner schools by providing educators with the tools to seamlessly blend the arts with all other subject areas. The grant will help Right Brain bring its four-year hands-on professional development program to more than 1,200 area teachers, arts specialists, principals and teaching artists in the 2016-17 school year. Through collaboration between Right Brain teaching artists and classroom teachers, the program will serve more than 26,000 K-8 students in urban, suburban and rural communities of Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties, Oregon.

The NEA’s Art Works grants support the creation and presentation of work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement through 13 arts disciplines or fields. This award is part of $82 million distributed by the NEA to fund local arts projects across the nation. To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring16. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov.

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The Right Brain Initiative is a sustainable partnership of public schools, local government, foundations, businesses and the cultural community working to transform learning through the arts for all K-8 students in the Portland metro area. Now in its eighth year, Right Brain serves 63 schools and approximately 25,000 students from urban, suburban and rural communities in the Portland area. In fall of 2014, Right Brain released data connecting the program to an above-average increase in student test scores, with greatest results for English Language Learners. Right Brain is an initiative of the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Young Audiences of Oregon & SW Washington serves as Implementation Partner. Read more online at TheRightBrainInitiative.org.

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) provides grants for artists, nonprofit organizations and schools in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties; manages an internationally acclaimed public art program; raises money and awareness for the arts through Work for Art; convenes forums, networking events and other community gatherings; provides workshops and other forms of technical assistance for artists; and oversees a program to integrate arts and culture into the standard curriculum in public schools through The Right Brain Initiative. RACC values a diversity of artistic and cultural experiences and is working to build a community in which everyone can participate in culture, creativity and the arts. For more information visit racc.org.

Artist in Residence at the Portland Archives and Records Center

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RACC has tapped artist Sabina Zeba Haque to be part of a year-long residency at the Portland Archives and Records Center (PARC). The artist will collaborate with PARC staff to explore Portland neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue and to unravel the history of exclusion and inclusion in this community. This is the second in a series of public art residencies funded by the City of Portland Percent for Art Program administered by RACC.

For many years, 82nd Avenue served as the easternmost boundary of the city of Portland. In 1980s Portland expanded the city’s boundaries roughly to 182nd Avenue, annexing approximately 140,000 people. Long-time residents, neighborhood activists and an influx of South East Asian immigrants came together in this evolving geographical space in a decade marked by economic and political turmoil. Today, with a quarter of the city’s population and nearly 40% of its youth, East Portland is the most diverse and rapidly growing section of the city.

Through her residency, Haque will explore how the neighborhood’s identity has evolved over the last 35 years, and how Portland can preserve its past while fostering a more inclusive civic identity.  Using oral histories, archival sources, and theater workshops, the artist will create a voice-by-voice community portrait of the communities around 82nd Avenue via hand-drawn animation and video. The project seeks to give nuance and form to this vibrant neighborhood and works toward civic equity through art and creative community engagement.

Haque is an artist of South Asian descent raised in Karachi, Pakistan. Her work combines oral histories, video performance and hand-drawn animation to explore the turbulent transformations of identity and place. She received an MFA in Painting from Boston University and teaches at Portland State University. In 2015 Haque was a TEDxMtHood speaker and artist-in-residence.

UPDATE: Annexation & Assimilation: Exploring City Archives East of 82nd Ave

Haque’s project exhibition, Annexation & Assimilation: Exploring City Archives East of 82nd Ave, will be on display at Open Signal from February 16 – April 28, 2017. Public viewing hours will be Tuesday – Friday (10:00am -10:00pm) and Saturday – Sunday (noon – 8:00pm).

On April 20th, there will be a panel discussion: Policy and Imagination: Place-Keeping in Portland, How Artists and City Managers Can Envision the Future City at Open Signal.

For more information contact Kristin Calhoun at kcalhoun@racc.org or 503.823.5401.

Your Input Sought for a new Arts Facility in Beaverton

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The City of Beaverton needs your help to plan a proposed Arts and Culture Center facility that is currently under consideration.

We need your help to plan the Arts and Culture Center.  Please take the following survey and let us know how often you would use the facility, what type of performances you would like to see, and what you would be willing to pay to attend programs.

The survey is available until Friday, May 6.  Your participation will help shape the future character of the center – so please share your views!

http://www.beavertonoregon.gov/ACC

Below: Early Preliminary Rendering of Proposed Arts and Culture Center by Place Landscape Architects

Beaverton Arts April 2016

State of the Arts

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Eloise’s Blog:

Many thanks to all who attended our annual presentation to City Council when we thank Council for their on-going support. While we also talk about how we invested the City’s allocation to RACC over the past year, we focus even more on how powerful the impacts of these dollars are to artists, arts organizations, schools, and arts enthusiasts around our region and beyond.

The Obo Addy Legacy Project opened the event on April 21st with rousing and reverberating Ghanean drumming as people entered Council Chambers. RACC’s Board Chair, Jan Robertson, and I then ran through some highlights of our programs in 2015 and we were all treated to music performed by a quintet from Bravo Youth Orchestra.

These talented Rosa Parks Elementary students are evidence of what magic can happen thanks to their music teacher paid for by the Arts Tax, and an arts organization, Bravo, providing learning experiences inside the school. Jan also described the ever growing Right Brain Initiative and how supportive our City leaders have been since day one.

I ran through images of recent public art projects including a Buster Simpson sculpture in South Waterfront and a wide array of murals funded in part by RACC’s Murals Program and Forest for the Trees, an organization that brings together local artists and others from around the world to create large scale murals around our city. The audience also saw sneak previews of upcoming public art  in the works. To see some of these images for yourselves, click here (slides 27-31).

RACC Board member and Chair of our Grants Review Committee, Susheela Jayapal, described the various ways we award City funds to artists and organizations and the challenges facing RACC and the organizations who benefit from the Arts Tax, which currently is not bringing in the full amount voted approved by Portland voters in 2012. Susheela also introduced jazz musician and PSU professor, Darrell Grant, who described what he was able to achieve thanks to a RACC Project Grant. Literary Arts Executive Director Andrew Proctor explained the phenomenal success of the inaugural year of its Wordstock Festival, newly adopted by his organization, a longtime member of RACC’s General Operating Support program. And finally Luann Algoso spoke about APANO’s Expanding Cultural Access grant, which supported their well-received Cultural Events Series in the Jade District.

RACC’s Board member Mike Golub introduced RACC’s on-going programs which beneficially connect arts and business. When Business for Culture and the Arts closed last summer, RACC was asked to take on two of the organization’s most successful programs. Art of Leadership under George Thorn’s leadership provides seminars to train business people to be Board members of nonprofit arts organizations. RACC now also hosts The Arts Breakfast of Champions, which recognizes top donors and champions of the arts. We hope to expand the event’s scope going forward to celebrate all the ways arts and business can partner to inspire employees and foster creative collaborations.

Mike Co-Chair’s Work for Art, our workplace giving program, which typically raises about $750k a year for arts organizations. In this 10th anniversary year RACC hopes to raise a $1 million, through workplace campaigns and events such as the upcoming Battle of the Bands, May 12th. Part of ZGF’s competing band, Pencil Skirt Paula and the Straightedge Rulers, treated the audience to a musical tribute to Prince.  Finally Ian Mouser of My Voice Music testified about the amazing work his organization can do for kids with City funding, and the grand finale was a moving duet sung by Matthew Gailey and Lea Mulligan of PHAME (below).

SOTAphame_CommFish1

We so value and appreciate everyone’s time and enthusiasm and the long-standing and heartfelt commitment by our supportive City Council!

Media artists invited to apply for RACC’s 2016 fellowship award

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The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) is now accepting applications from media artists (including film, video and audio) for RACC’s annual artist fellowship award. Applications are now available through the RACC GrantsOnline system at http://racc.culturegrants.org.

Since 1999, the RACC fellowship award has honored and supported uniquely talented local artists who contribute to the community in very meaningful ways. This year RACC plans to award two fellowships, with each artist receiving a cash award of $20,000. RACC rotates the recognition among four disciplines every year – visual arts, media arts, literature, and performing arts. Past Media Arts Fellows have included Jim Blashfield (2001), Chel White (2004), Joanna Priestley (2007) and Lawrence Johnson (2012).

Guidelines and applications are available in RACC’s GrantsOnline system. To be considered, applicants must submit an Intent to Apply form no later than 5:00 pm, July 6, 2016.

A panel of community representatives with expertise in the media arts reflecting the disciplines of the applicants will select the two fellowship winners. An artist’s involvement in the community will play a significant role in evaluating each application. In addition, applicants must meet several strict criteria in order to be eligible for these highly competitive awards:

  • The applicant must be a professional artist, as recognized by their peers, with a minimum of 10 years of experience in the media arts.
  • The applicant must have been an Oregon resident for a minimum of 5 years and a current resident of Clackamas, Multnomah, or Washington Counties.
  • The applicant must demonstrate sustained high artistic quality of artmaking.

Other RACC fellows are listed at racc.org/fellows, and they include: Mary Oslund, Obo Addy, Christine Bourdette, Terry Toedtemeier, Michele Glazer, Tomas Svoboda, Keith Scales, Judy Cooke, Michael Brophy, Craig Lesley, Thara Memory, Henk Pander, Kim Stafford, Robin Lane, Eric Stotik, Sallie Tisdale, Linda Austin, Anita Menon, David Eckard, and Ellen Lesperance.

For more information about the fellowship award and other RACC grants visit racc.org/grants.