RACC Blog

RACC celebrates National Arts in Education Week

Posted on September 12, 2016 at 12:56 pm.

Written by RACC IT

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) joins colleagues across the country to celebrate National Arts in Education Week, September 11-17, 2016. Throughout the week, RACC and The Right Brain Initiative will share stories on social media about how arts education has impacted our community, including perspectives from staff, as well as the students and educators we serve. To read these stories, follow: RACC Facebook, RACC Twitter, Right Brain Facebook, Right Brain Twitter, Right Brain Instagram.

As part of the celebration, The Right Brain Initiative has released its 2016 Progress Reportdetailing its unique arts education program and services in the 2015-16 school year.

In its seventh year, Right Brain served 25,641 K-8 students in the tri-county area, 51% of whom qualify for the free and reduced lunch program. Through hands-on workshops and coaching, Right Brain helped over 1,932 educators weave the arts into their daily teaching practice. Right Brain provided over 1,485 classroom teacher and artist collaborations, providing students with the opportunity to learn the arts as well as learn through the arts.

Right Brain also continues to receive local and national attention. In October of 2015, Right Brain was awarded the Game-Changing Project award at Portland Monthly’s prestigious Light a Fire Awards, recognizing some of the most dynamic nonprofits in the city. In January of 2016, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Jane Chu and Oregon Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici visited Right Brain programming in action in the Hillsboro School District. Read more by downloading the full report: 2016 Progress Report.

Now in its eighth year, Right Brain is growing to serve 27,500 K-8 students in 67 schools in seven school districts: Corbett, Gresham-Barlow, Hillsboro, North Clackamas, Oregon Trail, Portland Public, and the newest addition, Reynolds. This fall, Right Brain is adding six partner schools between Hillsboro and Boring, including Alder Elementary, Corbett Grade, Kelso Elementary, King K-8, Poynter Middle, and Troutdale Elementary.

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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.

Benz and Chang highlight the Hawthorne Bridge with an installation at the Portland Building, September 19 – October 14

Posted on September 9, 2016 at 10:56 am.

Written by RACC IT

PORTLAND, ORE – Beginning September 19^th the artists known as Benz and Chang will present a site-specific art installation in the Portland Building lobby. The project, titled The Bridge, 1910, is a visual homage to the work crews that built the Hawthorne Bridge, Portland’s oldest existing river crossing.

PDX_BldgBenz-image-2_Sept-Octcropped

Inspired by a historical photo (above) Benz discovered in the City of Portland Archives, the installation recreates a bridge work crew scene through a series of four large paper screens hung in the exhibition space. Each individual screen has been crafted into a hand-cut silhouette which offers a different layer of visual information. When viewed together—looking through all four at once—the silhouettes complete the scene and mythologize our idea of building of a bridge. By adjusting position in front of or alongside the silhouettes, viewers can alter their angle of view and manipulate the degree of abstraction or representation they take in.

“To dream of a bridge may signify making a connection, crossing a transition, or overcoming an obstacle. When we were contemplating the project, I came across this photo from the City of Portland Archives and was struck by the poses and faces. I wanted to bring these figures and bridge building into a more dream-like, archetypal representation. Here are the agents of change and here is their means of transport over this obstacle.” — Benz

Benz and Chang’s “The Bridge” installation at the Portland Building.

About the Artists: Benz and Chang live and work in Portland and have shown in both Oregon and Colorado. Benz has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Benz and Chang use popular subject matter from early 20^th Century photography to explore the topics of spirituality, shifting identity, and transformative experiences. Chang is a fictional creative partner to Benz. You can visit their website at http://www.benzandchang.com

Viewing Hours & Location: The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5^th Avenue in down-town Portland and is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday – Friday. The Bridge, 1910 opens September 19 and runs through October 14, 2016.

Meet the Artists: Join us for a chance to meet the artists and discuss the installation in person on Thursday, September 22 at 4 p.m..

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) manages the 13’ x 8’ installation space in the lobby of the Portland Building and presents installation based art there year round. For more information, including images, proposals, and statements for projects dating back to 1994, go to www.racc.org/installationspace.

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National Arts In Education Week is September 11-17

Posted on September 6, 2016 at 12:10 pm.

Written by RACC IT

Issued by Americans for the Arts on September 6, 2016.

As a reminder, please join us in celebrating National Arts In Education Week from September 11-17, 2016. Take two minutes to issue a Letter to the Editor to your local papers and tell them why the arts matter in education!

Designated by Congress in 2010, House Resolution 275 names the week beginning with the second Sunday in September as National Arts in Education Week. During this week, the field of arts education and its supporters join together in communities across the country to tell the story of the transformative power of the arts in education.

In 2016, it is a particularly important time to celebrate arts education, as we usher in a new chapter of American educational policy with the new Every Student Succeeds Act and its many arts-friendly provisions. In the new law, the arts remain a “well-rounded” subject and are empowered to be central to a child’s education in our public schools.

Our municipal, education, and state leaders need to know about the impact the arts have on young peoples’ lives and that they must support the arts in every district and every school in America. Write a letter to the editor now to tell them how and why the arts matter in education!

After sending in your letter, you can join the movement of thousands of arts education advocates celebrating National Arts in Education Week. Contribute to the visibility campaign on social media during the week of September 11-17, 2016 by using the hashtag, #BecauseOfArtsEd. People from all walks of life can share their story of the transformative power of the arts in their own education and the impact the arts have had on their work and life.

Post on Facebook. Tell the world your #BecauseOfArtsEd story on Facebook. Describe what you are doing now in work and life and how arts education has a positive impact with a photo! Be sure to use #ArtsEdWeek, too.
Send a tweet. Share your quick #BecauseOfArtsEd story on Twitter. Be sure to include an image or video along with #ArtsEdWeek.
Share a photo. Post your favorite arts education photo on Instagram along with your #BecauseOfArtsEd story about the impact of arts education on your life. Be sure to use #ArtsEdWeek.

Be sure to do your part to advocate to our decision makers and bring attention to the cause of arts education!

BLUR PORTLAND: A visioning event on September 29

Posted on August 31, 2016 at 12:57 pm.

Written by RACC IT

How has art and culture made a difference in your business and your life?

Do you see the lines of our world of work/life/art blurring?

What should Portland look like when arts and business thrive?

What steps can we take to accelerate that?

BLUR graphic

RACC’s new Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) is planning a visioning event for local arts, business, and political leaders interested in better understanding the future role of arts and culture to help our communities thrive. At this event, participants will share their visions for, experiences with, and challenges to making healthy communities through the blurring of business, arts and culture.

This is not a fund-raising event, it is an action-raising event.

GOAL ONE: Help arts and business leaders and the public better understand and celebrate arts and culture as methods for creating healthy communities.

GOAL TWO: Generate a community dialogue around the creation and sustainability of healthy, vibrant, creative communities.

GOAL THREE: Activate a diverse set of programming and partnerships spanning public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

GOAL FOUR: Lay the groundwork for a collective movement forward over the next decade and beyond.

Thursday, September 29 from 4:00 – 7:30 p.m.

Lagunitas Brewing Company, 237 NE Broadway, Portland OR 97232

Food and beverage provided, courtesy of Lagunitas Brewing Company and The Standard.

The event is free, but please RSVP at http://bit.ly/blurpdx

Download a PDF version of this invitation here.

For more information contact: Jeff Hawthorne, Director of Community Engagement, jhawthorne@racc.org.

Coming to the Portland Building Installation Space: “The Bridge, 1910,” an installation by Benz and Chang, September 19 – October 14.

Posted on August 30, 2016 at 2:33 pm.

Written by RACC IT

The artists known as Benz and Chang will present a site-specific installation in the Portland Building lobby starting September 19^th. The project, titled The Bridge, 1910, is a visual homage to the work crews that built the Hawthorne Bridge, Portland’s oldest existing river crossing.

Inspired by a historical photo Benz discovered in the City of Portland Archives, the installation recreates a bridge work crew scene through a series of four large paper screens hung in the exhibition space. Each individual screen contains a hand-cut silhouette which offers a layer of visual information. Viewed together, the silhouettes complete and frame the scene into a recognizable archetypal representation of the building of a bridge. By adjusting position in front of or alongside the silhouettes, viewers can alter their angle of view and manipulate the degree of abstraction or representation they take in.

The Portland Building is located at 1120 SW 5^th Avenue in downtown Portland. The exhibition is free and open to the public from 8 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday. For more information on the Portland Building Installation Space series, including images, proposals, and statements for all projects dating back to 1994, visit http://racc.org/installationspace.

Celebrating four years of “Forest For the Trees” mural fest

Posted on August 30, 2016 at 2:22 pm.

Written by RACC IT

Over 60 murals in 4 years. Forest For the Trees returns to Portland with 7 new public art works.

North, South, East and West, for the last four years “Forest For the Trees” has been responsible for bringing domestic and international artists to Portland for the purpose of creating public art. For this year’s installment, murals are being created by local artist Adam Friedman at the Maker House on North Bryant Street (at right); Whole9 and Peach Momoko from Japan at Cider Riot on NE Couch; Local artist Jesse Hazelip at Hanoi Kitchen on NE Glisan; Colorado artist Molly Bounds, Alex Gardner (below) from California and Max McMaster from California at Disjecta on North Interstate; locals David Rice and Zach Yarington at The Redd on SE 7^th Avenue; Japanese artist Yoshi47 (below) and New York artist Nina Chanel Abney (below) at ADX on SE 11^th Avenue; and local painter and sculptor J. Shea at the Portland International Airport Terminal A.

The non-profit festival started in 2013 with the idea of bringing artists from around the world to Portland in order to create public art that would enhance and educate the local community. Forest For the Trees is organized by artist Gage Hamilton, Hellion Gallery owner Matt Wagner and event producer Tia Vanich. The mural festival’s name comes from the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees,” which signifies the inability to understand the greater picture when you are too focused solely on what is in front of you. Forest For The Trees hopes to pull Portland’s residents away from their daily routines and provide them a moment of appreciation for the creativity that surrounds us in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. RACC’s partnership with the festival has allowed the project to grow and continue to add to the city’s public art collection.

“Since the 2014 event, RACC has recognized the importance of this program bringing new art to the city’s landscape and supports FFTTNW with funding from the Public Art Murals Program,” says RACC public art manager Peggy Kendellen. “This year marks the first time that all of the murals created as part of the event have become part of the City of Portland’s public art collection. The considerable effort on the part of the curators continues to bring striking murals to the city’s evolving public art landscape while providing great opportunities for local artists, local business owners and neighborhoods to be part of this contemporary art landscape.”

This year’s mural festival brought artists from France, Japan and cities throughout the United States to Portland, where they created murals in neighborhoods across the city. In addition to the murals the festival hosted live performances, short film festival, and public art installations. In the past the central city area was the focus of the festival. With return of this year’s festival, new outer areas of the city were added. Adam Friedman painted a wall at the Maker House on 1505 North Bryant Street in North Portland.

“I’m obsessed with mountains,” Adam explains. “I think a mountain is the ultimate symbol of the sublimity and power of nature. One of my favorite things about living in Portland is seeing Mt Hood on a clear day.” His vibrantly colored depiction of Mt Hood faces the Max lines on North Interstate Avenue.

“Some days it looks close enough to reach out and touch,” Adam says. “Hood is such an icon of Portland, and Oregon in general. But as with anything, we can desensitized to something we see every day. By showing Hood in a new light the mural is meant to serve as an homage to our local beauty and a reminder of how lucky we are to live here.”

A new partnership this year is with Disjecta in North Portland. Disjecta is a contemporary art center that receives general operating support from RACC. Besides hosting two of the Forest For the Trees live performances, the art center is the home to 3 new murals for this year’s festival. Artists Molly Bounds, Alex Gardner and Max McMaster have created something really special for the Kenton Neighborhood.

“There are people who do and people that wish they could do,” says Bounds, referring to the overall theme of the wall. The pastel figurative mural is meant to inspire people to create.

Mural by Molly Bounds and Alex Gardner at Disjecta, N. Interstate.

On NE Glisan, artist Jesse Hazelip created a piece that reflects a cultural element to the neighborhood. The piece features a pack of wolves and the phrase in Vietnamese that translates to “unity is strength.” The artist states, “It’s about the oppressed coming together. I use the wolf as a metaphor for prisoners. Humans are pack animals like the wolf. When we are separated from our pack it takes a toll emotionally.”

Another first this year is a mural and sculpture installation from J. Shea at Portland International Airport. The installation is inspired by the artist’s fascination of all things flight. J. Shea has created a whimsical flowing installation that features some of his favorite floating characters. The installation is a mixture of a mural and a collection of mobile-like suspended sculptures. The work opens the viewer up to a colorful world of flying vessels and drifting creatures that sift through the air while always keeping in mind a perfect balance of scale, shape and recycled details.

In the future, The Forest For the Trees mural festival will continue to explore contemporary public art. This year’s expansion into live performance, short film films and multimedia installation signifies a continued effort to bring new and exciting creative projects to the city of Portland. The curiosity of the organizers will foster these explorations into new media and innovative artists to add to our city’s community.

For more information and images of all completed murals, visit www.forestforthetreesnw.com.

Mural by Japanese artist Yoshi47 at ADX on SE 11th.

Mural by New York artist Nina Chanel Abney at ADX on SE 11th.

The Right Brain Initiative: another year of investing in imagination

Posted on August 30, 2016 at 2:05 pm.

Written by RACC IT

This time of year the sun is setting before 8:00 p.m., a new season of your favorite television series premieres, and wide-ruled notebooks are selling for 70 cents each. It is September and a new school year is officially upon us.

At the Regional Arts & Culture Council, The Right Brain Initiative is back in action at local schools.

Now in its eighth year, Right Brain is proud to serve over 27,500 K-8 students in seven school districts: Corbett, Gresham-Barlow, Hillsboro, North Clackamas, Oregon Trail, Portland Public, and our newest addition, Reynolds. This fall, Right Brain is adding six partner schools located between Hillsboro and Boring, including Alder Elementary, Corbett Grade, Kelso Elementary, King K-8, Poynter Middle, and Troutdale Elementary.

Professional development for school staff continues to be a cornerstone of the program, training teachers and principals on arts integration as an approach to teaching all subjects including language arts, science, social studies and math. As one educator put it, “By integrating the arts into [all] instruction, it becomes a powerful vehicle for making the subject-area content relevant and meaningful.” This year, we are excited to supplement our full-day off-campus training sessions for small teacher teams with in-school mini workshops to reach the entire school staff. Engage all teachers; reach all students.

Teachers also learn to weave the arts into classroom learning by collaborating with Right Brain teaching artists. Over the last year, seven new artists joined Right Brain’s Teaching Artist Roster diversifying artist residency offerings to include recycled art, digital animation, and Peruvian dance, among others.

Right Brain teaching artist Lin Lucas works with students at Rieke elementary school.

Last year, teaching artist Lin Lucas joined 3^rd grade classrooms at Rieke Elementary where students and teachers explored graphic arts as a vehicle to examining historical and cultural norms in the Portland community. During their social studies unit on the Oregon Trail, students created narratives in the form of comics to express the similarities and differences among people from different cultures. When asked what it takes to make a successful comic, one student explained, “I learned that you have to dig in, get tons of evidence, know the ‘who, what, when, where, and why,’ and you have to ask questions.” At the conclusion of the project she commented, “It just amazes me how far comics can go [to express] what other people’s perspectives are.” This experience most certainly demonstrates that creative expression provides new entry points into learning that can invigorate classrooms, stimulate student dialogue and cultivate reflection.

If you’re wondering how this happens, Right Brain is proud to unveil a brand new video illustrating how all of these program aspects fit together to change the learning experience for students. In the video, 7^th and 8^th grade teacher Laresa Beck applies what she has learned through Right Brain to make creative sparks fly in her classroom. “I’m a good teacher,” she says, “but Right Brain has kind of made me a great teacher.”

Beginning September 12, The Right Brain Initiative will celebrate National Arts in Education Week (September 11-17) by releasing our 2016 Progress Report. We will also share stories of how arts education has impacted our community, including perspectives from our staff, as well as the students and educators we serve. Help us celebrate arts education by being our friend on social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) to follow our updates and share your own story about how arts education has made a difference in your life.

Want to learn more about The Right Brain Initiative, meet our staff, and have your questions answered? Join us at our next Right Brain Information Session on Wednesday, October 12, 5:00-7:00 p.m. at RACC, 411 NW Park Avenue, Suite 101. Also check out our new fundraising campaign Invest in Imagination Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund Challenge that matches dollar-for-dollar new individual contributions of $100 or more, all to support The Right Brain Initiative.

Quick — Take a summer vacation before it’s too late

Posted on August 29, 2016 at 2:24 pm.

Written by RACC IT

Eloise Blog:

Right when everyone is gearing up for the crush of September activity, off we go to New England for family, friends, swimming in the warm Atlantic, and lobsters! It’s only a week and I know there will be wonderful arts events aplenty when we return.

So I am taking a blogging break – only to say Happy Labor Day and “see you in September”! Anyone else old enough to remember that song?