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We need to invest in individual artists, cultural communities, and cultural space

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A case for our sector by Seattle Arts Commission Co-Chair Dr. Quinton Morris on behalf of the Seattle Arts Commission

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy

Dear Mayor Durkan,

For more than a year now, Seattle has been enveloped in chaotic, stressful, and at times, inhumane moments that have tarnished our beloved city’s reputation. The haunting ripple effect of the global pandemic; the rise of racial injustices affecting people of color; economic devastation in artistic and cultural communities; and the downward spiral of the emotional, mental and physical health of our city. People are suffering and our community is in crisis. At this point of devastation, what do we do? How can we evolve and change so that people from all walks of life, regardless of where they live in the world, perceive our city as a place that is comforting to call home and a safe place to visit?

On July 29, 2020, I wrote on behalf of the Seattle Arts Commission to both you and Seattle City Council to request that as little harm as possible come to the arts and cultural community, which includes many marginalized people from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and all people of color that includes Latino/x, Asian Pacific Americans and the spectrum of Immigrant/Refugee communities) community. Yet, there are so many people who are continuing to suffer and struggle, amid the many crises our city has experienced. As a Black artist, Seattle native, and co-chair of our Seattle Arts Commission, I am deeply concerned about the people in our community that we love so much. It is going to take a village to bring Seattle out of this crisis. More than 62% of artistic and creative workers have become fully unemployed, 95% of them have experienced significant income loss and 71% of arts organizations indicate that the financial impact has been “severe” due to the pandemic.

For the past year, the Office of Arts & Culture has served as an important partner in the COVID response initiative. The Office’s success can be attributed to strong partnerships it has maintained with our arts and cultural communities. The arts and cultural sector is uniquely positioned to unite and help bring feelings of safety and solace back to our city’s residents during this crucial COVID recovery period.

I recognize that this letter is probably unconventional and unlike others that you have received from my predecessors. I acknowledge the gracious support for Seattle’s arts and cultural communities which you have provided in the past. You have invested in those communities and because of such, we have thrived and been able to carry a tradition of artistic and cultural excellence. I applaud the exponential velocity with which the City moved to provide relief for arts and cultural organizations and artists, which we recognize as both the first cultural relief package in our country; and was also among the very first actions you took to address the pandemic. In the last year, artists created connections over screens, on pieces of plywood protecting buildings, and through their professional practices. These actions made people who were scared feel connected, gave communities whose voices had been silenced a microphone, and created moments of joy and relief in an unprecedented time. Your actions with the Office of Arts & Culture alone employed close to 100 artists who were employed through various Hope Corps projects that provided key support for the community in the areas of arts education, documentation, and connecting our community last year. More than 5,000 people have viewed The Creative Advantage teaching artist videos that were created in response to the pause of in-person education. For these actions, I am forever grateful.

However, a lot has changed in a year. The severe statistics and percentages, along with the countless stories that I’ve heard at numerous Arts Commission meetings have been heartbreaking. As we begin to rethink how to “re-open” and “revitalize” the vibrant, fantastic city we were “pre-pandemic”, I invite you to collaborate with the arts and cultural community so we can get people back to work. This will only be achieved through the following recommendations for American Rescue Plan fund distribution:

  1. Invest in individual artists: The CityArtist grant program has received 10x the number of applications it has funds to grant. There simply isn’t enough funding to address the significant need in our community. We need another plan of action to address this need. I respectfully request that you invest in individual working creatives in two areas:
    • Allocate $15 million to serve as a stimulus towards individual working creatives in Seattle. These creative workers have been deeply impacted, with nearly ⅔ out of work. Working artists can create welcoming and unique physical distancing markers for local businesses, bring people together safely with public art performances like music or dance or other performances in parks and public spaces, support storytelling and sharing with interviews, videos, and written narratives, and document recovery events and infrastructure. There are so many ways that creative workers can support the City as it works to re-open safely, while the City supports creative workers to remain as vital, respected members of our community.
    • Invest seed funding of $1 million annually for a period of three years towards Hope Corps, a strategy which centers the restoration of wealth to those who have been disproportionately impacted, both physically and financially, by COVID-19, people of color, while meeting civic needs. This allocation of funding would demonstrate your desire to assist the BIPOC community who are exhausted from the aftershocks of state-sanctioned murders, COVID-19, and persistent race-based injustices. This investment also carries out the sound findings from the Creative Economy report, which recognizes the need to address inequities in the sector while also pointing to its central economic role within our City. With this commitment, your leadership will fuel our work to sustain and build wealth in these communities.
  2. Invest in Cultural Communities: I am requesting that you make an investment of $20 million towards cultural organizations, which will assist in the economic recovery of the city. Cultural organizations will play a significant role in encouraging Seattleites to re-engage with their neighborhoods while attending events safely and return to supporting their local businesses. As the city reopens, cultural facilities and activities will rebrand our city as a safe place for tourists to visit and attract local and regional visitors, who will visit downtown and the various cultural communities that make the Emerald City so vibrant. A $20 million investment would match what King County and the State have announced and will demonstrate that the City of Seattle takes our role as a leader in the cultural sector seriously and is ready to invest in ensuring our cultural anchors, which will be the last businesses to reopen, and who were already on razor-thin margins, have the support of the City to weather this storm. This is an investment in the heart and soul of our City, as well as the economic recovery that comes with our community spending money on leisure and healing activities.
  3. Cultural Space: In my letter to you, addressed on July 29, 2020, I requested support from both you and the Seattle City Council regarding the protection of our cultural spaces. Because of the COVID-19 and social issues that have permeated our city, many cultural spaces have suffered significantly, losing revenue and resources. These organizations need time to recover and rebuild as the city begins to open up. While Governor Jay Inslee’s eviction moratorium will continue through June 30th, I am fearful that once it is lifted, we will see an enormous uptick in evictions in arts and cultural spaces. These evictions will exacerbate the mass migration of Seattle’s cultural anchors, and with them, our identity as a creative capital, outside of the city limits. Because of this, I am requesting that you forgive all rents for 2021-2022 for arts and cultural organizations and artists who call the City a landlord.

    I appreciate your support of the Cultural Space Agency and am so pleased that this new entity exists to develop and steward permanently affordable space for arts and culture. Having your support to anchor Seattle’s vibrant cultural communities in place by providing additional capital to advance the development projects chosen by the community constituency of the Cultural Space Agency will provide further resources to secure the arts and cultural life that makes our City so special, support social cohesion, and further business activity, all rooted in our City’s BIPOC communities and neighborhoods. This is truly a BIPOC-centered wealth-building strategy that simply needs to be resourced to fulfill its potential.

    Regarding the 2022 budget, I’m requesting that financial cuts, resulting from diminished Admissions Tax collection, be paused and that the Office of Arts & Culture’s budget is supplemented to match their 2019 adopted budget total, before pandemic impacts. In this time of dire need for this sector, we cannot undertake austerity. Finally, I request that the city invests in digital equity for all, which will have a significant impact for artists and arts organizations and their audiences in our city. It is essential that our community has access to Wi-Fi. We humbly request that the city invest immediately in keeping our community digitally connected to the world and to each other, which so heavily relies on technology, and is absolutely essential in this moment of virtual presentations. I recognize that we are living and experiencing unprecedented times. While I applaud the availability of resources that you have provided for our work, I remain cognizant of the growing pressures people feel daily that result in racial injustice and the decrease in affordability and sustainability in our arts and cultural communities. I am writing as a very concerned Seattle native who wants what is best for our city. I believe you, as a Seattle native, do too. Therefore, I feel this is a time to engage in uncomfortable conversations and make unprecedented requests. I believe that these activities will empower us to work towards solutions that will create a more racially inclusive and equitable distribution of available support. I acknowledge and appreciate your support in the work that you have done towards the preservation of cultural space and support for BIPOC communities. Our goal at the Arts Commission is to work with you in implementing these strategies and support the work you are already doing at the policy level.

    Recently, I met with Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington and we were able to speak about some of the same issues that I’ve raised in my letter to you. It was lovely to meet her and it seems that she shares a lot of the same concerns. I informed her that I would request a meeting with you so we could discuss some of these requests. I have since followed up and am awaiting confirmation on our meeting.

    As co-chair of the Seattle Arts Commission, I speak on behalf of all of my colleagues when I express my appreciation for your support in preserving the incredible arts and cultural city that we are known to be. I appreciate the action you have taken towards helping to sustain our arts community and the confidence you have in our Arts Commission in serving as allies in accomplishing the goals and initiatives you have already put in place.

    As you complete your term as Mayor, I believe that your legacy will be secured through your support of empowering and re-inspiring the arts and cultural community in our city. Please allow the Seattle Arts Commission to play a role in helping you. We stand with you in solidarity towards supporting the great work of Seattle arts and culture and appreciate your continued ongoing support, in advance.

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    Best wishes,
    Dr. Quinton Morris, co-chair
    Seattle Arts Commission
    Endorsed by the Seattle Arts Commission Sarah Wilke, Co-Chair, Meany Center for the Performing Arts; Cassie Chinn, Wing Luke Museum; Dawn Chirwa, Philanthropy Northwest; Kayla DeMonte, Citizen University; Steve Galatro, Pratt Fine Arts Center; Vivian Hua, Northwest Film Forum; Holly Jacobson, Path with Art; Yeggy Michael, Artist, Yeggy Studio; James Miles, Mentor Washington; Chieko Phillips, 4Culture; Vanessa Villalobos, Artist, Balorico Dance; Racquel West, Bill Holm Center; Mikhael Mei Williams, Seattle Art Museum

Fight for hope, fight for justice, fight for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community

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Black and white photo of a Chinese grandmother sitting on a bench and smiling at something off to the side. She's holding a young Chinese boy who reaches towards it. And a young Chinese girl holds on to Grandma's arm.
Grandma (#13) by Dean Wong, part of the Seattle Civic Art Collection, purchased with Seattle City Light 1% for Art funds

We are a society built on the premise of freedom and the reality of racism; ingenuity realized at the cost of freedom and through the labor of Blacks, Asians, immigrants, Native Americans, Latinx and countless others. 

As we recognize the horrific events that took place in Atlanta, GA last month, and the terror and trauma that has been inflicted on the AAPI community with an egregious uptick in anti-Asian violence, we must also recognize the death of another unarmed Black man, Daunte Wright, this past weekend. Instead of letting this latest violence distract us from uplifting our AAPI community, we must remember that the center of both of these things is white supremacy, and our intentionality in stamping out that scourge.  

Our BIPOC community has contributed so much to our country and in this time of anti-Asian hate we must stand up, make change and say no more. We recognize Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history is our history, that AAPI dreams are our dreams and that AAPI struggles are our struggles. 

Asian American and Pacific Islanders are our neighbors, co-workers, friends, family, aunties, and elders. ARTS stands in solidarity with our AAPI staff to create a better city, celebrate our diversity, honor our ancestors and support our AAPI community. 

We are taking this time to amplifying the words of our AAPI staff below:  

We demand our colleagues commit to interrupting and dismantling the structures and culture of institutional silence, neglect and dismissal, and implore you to denounce anti-Asian violence and sentiment in the strongest possible terms.  

History has shown us repeatedly that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are targeted scapegoats particularly in times of national crisis.  

Our elders are being viciously attacked on the streets during the pandemic while onlookers turn their backs and shut the door to their plea for help. Seven women, of whom six are of Asian heritage, were gunned down in Atlanta.  

This is not the first or the last we have seen of Asians being scapegoated for economic downturns and job losses, disease, our loyalty questioned, being perceived as forever foreigners, our presence deemed as yellow peril invasion, our women being exoticized by orientalist fantasies, and our monolithic portrayal as model minorities. We know that such portrayals are used to pit us against our fellow Black and Brown communities and are an ongoing manifestation of white supremacy culture. 

Invest in and support cultural organizations that have a proven history of ANTI-Racism, including but not limited to:  

Bolster the work of the following organizations and many others as it relates to healing, public safety, and community social cohesion through the arts:  

Support emergent, mid-career, and established art-ivists who are already doing the work of protecting their communities from displacement, gentrification, and now violence at the doorsteps of their communities. 

Silence and inaction continue the legacy of racism. If you are interested in ways you can make a difference, consider taking the following actions: 

The Office of Arts & Culture is working towards addressing these essential needs. We invite you to join us in making our city inclusive and welcoming to all, and dismantling the systems that seek to divide us, and distract from the root cause of white supremacy.  

2020 -2021 The Creative Advantage Professional Learning

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by Regan Pro, Kayla Skinner Deputy Director for Education & Public Engagement at the Seattle Art Musuem

Dalisha, a Black woman, with a crown of flowers, holds two posing dolls used for drawing in her hand.
Dalisha Phillips

For the past eight years The Creative Advantage in partnership with the Seattle Art Museum has provided free professional learning opportunities for teachers, teaching artists and community organizations. With a primary focus always on equity, the goals of these trainings are to:

  • Create space for community building and self-directed learning
  • Invite new speakers and perspectives to deepen Seattle-based conversations
  • Provide specific skills related to timely needs for Teaching Artists and educators
  • Continue to include and highlight youth voice

The 2020 – 2021 school year presented new challenges for delivering content but also greater need to bring our stakeholders together to build community, support each other and develop new skills to adapt to online teaching. In response to community feedback and the guidance of our Creative Advantage advisors, we tripled our typical number of offerings providing 17 workshops to 1,038 participants. Workshops roughly fell into three categories (with lots of cross over): providing skills training, fostering community support and centering youth voice. Below are examples from one of each group:

  • Helping educators pivot to their new virtual classrooms, Teaching Artist & Educator Gabriel-Bello Diaz led four workshops on Teaching with Microsoft Teams. Diaz brought his experience leading virtual workshops for teens at Pratt to share tips and tricks with teachers eager to find ways to adapt their best practices from classroom engagement to creative workshops in a digital space.
  • Responding to calls for mental health resources, Art Therapist Dalisha Phillips led a four-part series Keeping it Cool through Change, Challenge, and Conflict Utilizing Art-making and Creativity. Phillips worked with a small cohort in weeklies sessions focused on mindfulness and creativity.
  • A highlight of our trainings is always the workshops that center youth voice. This fall we learned from the brilliant youth participants and program facilitators listed below on what has been working, not working and what we can reimagine when it comes to digital learning.

KEXP: Sharlese Metcalf, Kennady Quille
Seattle Art Museum: Rayna Mathis, John McShea
5th Avenue Theatre: Orlando Morales, Gavin Bradler
TeenTix: Mariko Nagashima, Chelsea Nguyen

The learning has continued this spring as we offered our first online course Pause for Presence Course Series: The Art of Allowing Education to Heal with Dr. Bre Haizlip. Beginning in January, a cohort of over 100 educators met monthly to learn from Dr. Bre and each other. This work will continue into the last course session in May and then culminate with a keynote presentation from Dr. Bre at our Creative Advantage Summer Institute this August. While we are not yet sure when or what shape the Institute will take, we know it will adapt to fit the needs of our creative learning communities. Keep an eye out for more details and we hope to see you there!

A group of people standing, arms around each other.
Regan Pro (left), and The Creative Advantage Summer Institute panelists,
photo by Jenny Crooks

Special note from The Creative Advantage: Regan Pro is stepping out of her position as the Kayla Skinner Deputy Director for Education & Public Engagement at the Seattle Art Museum at the beginning of April. While our professional development partnership with Seattle Art Museum will continue, we want to pause to shower Regan with our love and gratitude for more than eight powerful, and joyful years of creative collaboration. The Creative Advantage has learned so much and benefited from Regan’s community-centered leadership and heart-centered engagement. We are beyond grateful to have worked alongside Regan to build a national model of what an arts and justice based professional learning community can be, and we wish her all the best for whatever comes next.

Please share gratitude and well wishes for Regan in the comments.

Seattle Civic Poet solicits poetry for a new community project

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A pod of orca swim just below the surface of the water, their fins and backs sticking up.

Jourdan Imani Keith invites you to submit pantoums for inclusion in her new project Women & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change, a virtual event in April, 2021, in partnership with Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and the Seattle Space Needle. 

Poetry submissions due April 11, 2021 

Apply

The Seattle Civic Poet, in partnership with the Office of Arts & Culture, seeks poetry in the form of a pantoum from new, emerging, and experienced poets for the Women and Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change collection. Up to 14 selected poems will be presented along with the work of the cohort at a public reading and panel discussion in late April. We will be seeking to publish the collection either in print and/or digitally. The application deadline is Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 11:59pm (Pacific Daylight Time).  

Women & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change is a multi-event project of 2019-21 Civic Poet Jourdan Imani Keith. The project seeks to center the experiences of Black Indigenous Women of Color and explore, through art, the impact of our choices on the environment we all share.

“As Black Indigenous Women of Color in Seattle, we share the urban wilderness of the Salish Sea with the endangered Killer Whales. Our bodies face the same cumulative risks of environmental toxins and the harms of objectification, yet we both survive and are revived by the cumulative benefits of, matrilineal wisdom, tradition and community. Our brilliance and wellness is entwined with the need for healthy and protected social and natural ecosystems.”

Jourdan Imani Keith

Black, Indigenous, Women of Color of all ages are strongly encouraged to apply. The deadline for applications is Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 11:59pm (Pacific Daylight Time). Applicants will be notified as to the status of their application in early April. Selected applicants will be invited to participate in a virtual public event in late April.   

Poems must be in the form of a Pantoum and explore the interconnectedness of the health of women, our water, and our whales. For more information on this connection, visit: https://urbanwildernessproject.com/2021/02/20/all-ages-general-public-call-for-poetry-womxn-whales-first-poetry-in-a-climate-of-change/ 

Detailed information about the call is available on Submittable: https://seattlearts.submittable.com/submit/189256/call-for-poetry-womxn-and-whales-first-poetry-in-a-climate-of-change 

For further information on the Call for Poetry: Women & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change, please visit Urban Wilderness Project’s website here or contact Carol Roscoe at croscoe@seattleu.edu. 

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The Women & Whales, Poetry in a Climate of Change is presented in partnership with the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Jack Straw, Seattle Public Library Foundation, Seattle City of Literature, and the Seattle Space Needle.  

ABOUT JOURDAN IMANI KEITH: 

The City of Seattle’s 2019 -2021 Civic Poet, Jourdan Imani Keith is a storyteller, essayist, playwright, naturalist and activist. A student of Sonia Sanchez, her TEDx Talk, “Your Body of Water,” the theme for King County’s 2016-2018 Poetry on Buses program won an Americans for the Arts award. Her poetry is largely anthologized and was long listed by Danez Smith for Cosmonauts Avenue poetry prize. Keith’s Orion Magazine essays, “Desegregating Wilderness” and ” At Risk” were selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing Anthology (Houghton Mifflin). She has been awarded fellowships from Hedgebrook, Wildbranch, Santa Fe Science Writing workshop, VONA, and Jack Straw. Her memoir in essays, Tugging at the Web, is forthcoming from University of Washington Press.

Meet the Artists in Residence: Bridge Graphic Novel

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  • Page from Change of Worlds by Roger Fernandes
  • Page from The Canal Was Cut by E.T. Russian

Perched above the road and waterway in the University and Fremont Bridge towers, two artists spent four months thinking about their surroundings and creating graphic novel works inspired by the location and their experiences. The artworks created during this residency are beautiful, meaningful and vibrate with resonance to the iconic and unique Bridge tower locations.   

Join the artists as they share more about their artwork and experiences. The virtual event will begin with opening remarks by Jose Alaniz and ARTS Staff Maija McKnight, and questions submitted by the audience will be answered at the end of the prepared presentation. Printed copies of each of the graphic novels will be available at a future date, and individuals that register for this workshop will get first notice of availability.  

Thursday, April 8, 2021; 7 p.m.
Public presentation Bridge Graphic Novels
Register Here

This online event will be recorded and be available on the Office of Arts & Culture YouTube Channel. It will be live captioned and have ASL translation. 

Roger Fernandes, the artist in residence at the Fremont Bridge, created the graphic novel Change of Worlds: The Fremont Bridge Cycle. Roger Fernandes is an artist and writer, storyteller and educator. As a member of the Lower Elwha S’Klallam Tribe of Washington State, he has also been a practicing professional artist for well over 40 years, working in graphic design and the traditional Coast Salish art. Roger was born in the city of Seattle and has a deep sense of the “spirit” of the city and how it has morphed over the past 20 years or so. The Ship Canal, to Roger, has always represented a clear delineation of “white” North Seattle and the much more racially diverse South Seattle. To cross the bridge was oftentimes more challenging than we modern urban folk might recognize. This is a wonderful opportunity to weave all these elements together. 

E.T. Russian, the artist in residence at the University Bridge, created the work The Canal Was Cut a 28-page mini-comic. With 20+ years of experience making comics, while simultaneously exploring the cultural aspects of disability and chronic illness, ET is interested in the intersection of multi-sensory art. In this residency ET explored the elements of air, water, wind and earth, human relationship to spirits, nature and animals, themes of living and dying, colonization and landowning, decompressing from work, and dreams.  

This unique opportunity of providing space in the bridge towers to creatives has been a program since 2016 and has hosted visual artists, poets, musicians, lighting artists, and now comics artists to use the historic bridge locations as inspiration for the creation of new work. This residency ran from September – December 2020.

Funded by SDOT’s 1% for Art Funds and administered by the Office of Arts & Culture.

New FLOW artworks on display along the Ship Canal

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ARTS and Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) commissioned local emerging artists to develop new temporary art installations for four locations along SPU’s Ship Canal Water Quality Project locations in north Seattle. FLOW is featured at four site locations in Wallingford, Fremont and Ballard that make use of temporary construction walls and fences as part of the Ship Canal Water Quality Project. The latest round of artists installed their artworks and will remain on display until August 2021.  

Photo by Vaughn Bell

Barry Johnson, If only I Could 
Ballard – 24th Ave NW & Shilshole Ave NW 
This work is about duality and the constant role changing that’s forced upon Black people. We have to navigate many of our public situations differently from everyone else. Something as simple as turning without using a signal can result in death or any other small act that can easily be glossed over. We’re forced to change and constantly adapt our images to exist without threat of punishment. This work reflects the constant change that is forced upon us.  – Barry Johnson 

Photo by Jason Huff

Hugo Moro, Watergates 
East Ballard – NW 45th St & 11th Ave NW 
The addition of this tunnel to our infrastructure is a testament to our community’s commitment to protect the beautiful Salish Sea. We must also endeavor to eliminate, or greatly reduce our individual carbon footprint, specially where single-use plastics are concerned. This work is constructed from plastic generated over a year by a family of two.  – Hugo Moro 

Photo by Jason Huff

Whitney Lynn, Wine-Dark See 
Fremont – NW 36th St & Leary Way NW (Adjacent to Burke-Gilman Trail) 
Wine-Dark See is a series of narrative backdrops; a non-linear sequence of collaged public domain images combined with text drawn from Homer’s Odyssey, an epic poem describing a circuitous journey home, across stormy seas, after a prolonged series of difficult events.  – Whitney Lynn 

Photo by Jason Huff

Janelle Abbott, The Future Needs You NOW You Need the Future 
Wallingford – N 35th St & Interlake Ave N 
The Future Needs You NOW You Need the Future is a temporary art installation that brings awareness to the impact of climate change on mental health in light of current trends of overconsumption. Artist Janelle Abbott invited community members to send her their well-worn t-shirts in order to recontextualized potential waste into art. The t-shirts were cut into strips, wrapped around wire, then attached to the fencing adjacent to the North Transfer Station in order to spell out this important message that invites everyone to pause and take action for the future of our planet. 

Coming Soon: Artists Selected for FLOW 2021 – 2022

ARTS and SPU recently commissioned 11 emerging artists to develop new temporary art installation for four Ship Canal Water Quality Project sites that will be on display from August 2021 through February 2023. Artists selected include:

Ballard site: Dozfy, Va’eomatoka Valu, Perri Rhoden

East Ballard site: KT Hancock & Sarah Terry, Marsha Rollinger

Fremont site: Allyce Wood, Tommy Segundo, Christina Caravaglio

Wallingford site: Clare Johnson, Kait Rhoads & Lisa Liedgren Alexandersson, Malayka Gormally

Miller Community Center artwork feedback wanted

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In late 2021, Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center will become home to a new solar micro-grid and a new public artwork by artist Julia Harrison.     

The artwork concept embraces themes around solar energy including sustainability and emergency preparedness, the ideals of the community center, and input from the community.  A partnership between Seattle City Light, Seattle Parks and Recreation, and Office of Arts & Culture, this new public art project weaves together a wide range of themes and inspirations through the creativity artists’ lens.  

The overarching goal of the artwork is to reflect and celebrate the varied activities and individuals that use the Miller Community Center while referencing the inventive and invisible Solar collection on the roof of the building.  Your are invited to learn more about the proposed artwork available through this video as well as additional information on the artists’ website:   

www.juliaharrison.net/miller-community-center.html 

 
The design has not yet been finalized and your feedback is very welcome! Please feel free to contact the artist at MillerCenterArt@gmail.com with any comments, or to suggest additions or revisions.  

This project is commissioned through Seattle City Light % for Art Funds and Administered through the Office of Arts & Culture. 

Seattle Civic Poet curates BIPOC community poetry project to perform for World Poetry Day

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Womxn & Whales, Poetry in a Climate of Change, is a virtual reading March 21, 2021,   

hosted by the Seattle Library Foundation in partnership with Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. 

Virtual Reading and Q&A Sunday, March 21st, 2021, 4 p.m. pst. 

EVENT REGISTRATION CAN BE FOUND HERE 

Admission is free  

Celebrate World Poetry Day on March 21, 2021 with seven Black, Indigenous, Womxn of Color reading original poetry that explores the intersectionality of womxn’s health, healing, and the endangered Orca whales of the Salish Sea.  

Seattle Civic Poet Jourdan Imani Keith, along with six other local poets, will perform original pantoums developed through workshops facilitated by Keith over the last few months as part of her larger project, Womxn & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change. The pantoum is a poetry verse form that originated in Malaysia in the 15th century and will be the form that guides the general public call for poetry curated by Keith through March. For more information on the general call for poetry click here.  

Womxn & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change is a multi-event project of 2019-21 Civic Poet Jourdan Imani Keith with the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. The project seeks to center the experiences of Black Indigenous Women of Color and explore, through art, the impact of our choices on the environment we all share.  

“As Black Indigenous Womxn of Color in Seattle, we share the urban wilderness of the Salish Sea with the endangered Killer Whales,” says Keith. “Our bodies face the same cumulative risks of environmental toxins and the harms of objectification, yet we both survive and are revived by the cumulative benefits of matrilineal wisdom, tradition and community. Our brilliance and wellness is entwined with the need for healthy and protected social and natural ecosystems.” 

After the virtual reading, Keith and the other poets will hold a conversation with the audience. The event will start at 4 pm (PST) and run approx. 70 minutes including multiple readings, as well as audience Q&A. Registration for the event can be found here. 

The Seattle Public Library reading is the first event under the Womxn & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change project. Future events include a general public call for poetry, a public celebration and reading on April 22, 2021 in honor of Earth Day, and a publication of selected poems. For more information, or to submit for the general public call for poetry, apply here. 

For further information on Womxn & Whales First, Poetry in a Climate of Change, please visit Urban Wilderness Project’s website here or contact Jaeeun Kim at kimjaeeun74@gmail.com. 

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The event is presented in partnership with The Seattle Public Library Foundation, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and Seattle City of Literature. This event is supported by the Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation. Thanks to media sponsor The Seattle Times.  

ABOUT JOURDAN IMANI KEITH: 

The City of Seattle’s 2019 -2021 Civic Poet, Jourdan Imani Keith is a storyteller, essayist, playwright, naturalist and activist. A student of Sonia Sanchez, her TEDx Talk, “Your Body of Water,” the theme for King County’s 2016-2018 Poetry on Buses program won an Americans for the Arts award. Her poetry is largely anthologized and was long listed by Danez Smith for Cosmonauts Avenue poetry prize. Keith’s Orion Magazine essays, “Desegregating Wilderness” and ” At Risk” were selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing Anthology (Houghton Mifflin). She has been awarded fellowships from Hedgebrook, Wildbranch, Santa Fe Science Writing workshop, VONA, and Jack Straw. Her memoir in essays, Tugging at the Web, is forthcoming from University of Washington Press. 

Amy Nguyen joins the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture as the new Public Art Program Manager

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The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture is excited to announce Amy Nguyen as the new Public Art Program Manager. Amy leads the dynamic team charged with overseeing the City’s investments in generative artmaking in the public realm. She joined the office full time in January 2021.

“I see public art as culture mapped on physical space,” says Amy. “I’m thrilled to build upon the rich legacy of the Public Art program and to forge new opportunities to invest in art that truly reflects the artistic expression of those most impacted. I believe through community-driven public art, we have the power to envision the City we want to live in.”

The Public Art Program integrates artworks and the ideas of artists into a variety of public settings, advancing Seattle’s reputation as a cultural center for innovation and creativity. The program specifies that 1% of eligible city capital improvement project funds be set aside for the commission, purchase and installation of artworks in a variety of settings. The Civic Art Collection currently includes more than 400 permanently sited and integrated works and nearly 3,000 portable works. 

Amy’s work as an administrator and urban planner is rooted in participatory process and she brings with her the understanding that public art is central to how we construct public space in cities. By providing opportunities for individuals to encounter art in parks, libraries, community centers, on roadways, bridges and other public venues, the Public Art program simultaneously enrich our daily lives and give voice to artists.   

Prior to joining ARTS, Amy spent over 10 years as a public servant and nonprofit leader that includes serving in management roles at the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and as a Legislative Aide for a Seattle City Council member. Beyond that, her experience in policy analysis, nonprofit management and community organizing spans New York City, New Orleans and Seattle. Amy received a Master’s degree in Urban Policy and an undergraduate degree in Urban Studies from the New School in New York. 

Poetry in Pandemic Times

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by Alicia Craven, Director of Education, Seattle Arts & Lectures

In this year of remote learning, support from The Creative Advantage has allowed schools to provide essential creative outlets for students to process and respond with vibrancy and curiosity to a world outside that can feel alternatingly both rapidly changing and static.

One example is through Writers in the Schools, (WITS), a program of Seattle Arts & Lectures. Founded in 1994, WITS brings professional writers—in poetry, prose and comics— into public school classrooms throughout the Puget Sound Region for extended creative writing residencies.

During this year of remote learning, the program has continued with writers beaming into elementary through high school classes for creative writing lessons to help students develop and strengthen their authentic writing voices and become authors of their own lives.

To the Moon by Stella Hoffman Logan, age 10, Dearborn Elementary School, Fourth Grade Dear Moon, where do you go when you disappear you aren't fiery like the sun but you are beautiful in all your serene glory how can you stand all that darkness that surrounds you chasing you following you wherever you go isn't it sad? all that darkness? no light? Dear Human, I disappear into darkness when the sky wraps me in its cool yet warm presence I fade away I know I'm not fiery and darkness is my home that's how I stand it but how can you stand all that light chasing you wherever you go isn't it so bright? All that light, no darkness?

When in-person schooling was paused last spring, WITS moved their annual Year-End Reading event to an online format, and celebrated student work through recorded videos and both a digital gallery and printed posters of student writing. We are all grateful to be part of a creative constellation of youth arts programming in this city!

Learn more about WITS and the sister program, Seattle Youth Poet Laureate.