Our Arc Artist Fellowship provides critical—but rare—unrestricted funding to a new and unique cohort of King County artists every year. The six 2021 Fellows are all between the ages of 18 and 25 and are creating art that challenges structures of power in the global fight for social justice. Here’s your chance to meet this incredible group! Join us for a two-part virtual showcase to hear from each artist about their work:

September 1, 12:00–1:00 pm
Register
• Diego Binuya
• Saiyana Suzumura
• Monyee Chau
Hosted by 2020 Arc Fellow Anastacia-Renee Tolbert

September 8, 7:00-8:00 pm
Register
• Kayla Stokes
• Joyee Runninghawk
• Mikhail Calliste
Hosted by 2019 Arc Fellow Nic Masangkay

Separate registrations are required for each session. Once you register, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link and password to the virtual event—hang onto this email! Please contact if you have any trouble registering. Sessions will be captioned.

For those of you who are current Sustained Support recipients or interested in applying to 4Culture’s Sustained Support program for funding in 2022, we want to let you know of some significant, temporary changes to the program. We historically have been, and will continue to be, deeply committed to supporting the cultural sector with operating funds. With this year’s significant reduction of the lodging taxes that make 4Culture’s grant programs possible and the approval of the American Rescue Plan Act, operating support will look different in 2021 for funding in 2022.

4Culture and King County will partner this fall to distribute over $29 million to the arts, culture, heritage, historic preservation, and science education sectors in 2022. We are currently working closely with King County agencies and will have more details to share mid-September. In the meantime, we will not open our Sustained Support grant for applications in late August, as we usually do. We thank you for your patience as we coordinate with our County partners and build our programs.

Please note that 2021 Sustained Support awards are not impacted by these changes.

Robert Morris’ celebrated Untitled Earthwork (Johnson Pit #30), one of the first ever publicly-funded Land Art projects, is now listed in the Washington Heritage Register.

This honorary designation brings the site one step closer to precedent-setting inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, potentially paving the way for other earthworks in need of protection.

The intensive nomination process was led by Rich Freitas, Historical Landscape Architect at the National Park Service, and Kasia Keeley, Associate Designer at Mithun, alongside 4Culture staff Dana Phelan, Kelly Pajek, and Jordan Howland. Numerous art and design professionals, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, and State Architectural Historian Michael Houser lent support as well.

Inspired by early efforts to use art as a means for rehabilitating abused post-industrial sites, 4Culture‚ then known as the King County Arts Commission‚ sponsored an innovative symposium called Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture in 1979.

The Commission brought together a unique team of government agencies and artists to discuss the potential of earthworks—large-scale sculptures that use the earth itself as their medium—and to create historic public artworks designed to restore natural areas damaged by industry.

Robert Morris received the first demonstration project commission. He removed undergrowth from an abandoned 3.7-acre gravel pit in the Kent Valley, terraced the earth, and planted it with rye grass, in effect returning the land to active use. Decades later, the destination continues to serve as a community gathering place.

You can learn more about Morris and Johnson Pit #30 on our website and visit from dawn to dusk 7 days per week.

Doing cultural work amidst a global pandemic is no easy feat. King County creatives of all disciplines have faced closures, loss of work, and uncertainty—and we at 4Culture are navigating COVID-19-related financial challenges as well. Throughout it all the cultural sector’s creativity shines through undiminished, and that’s especially evident in our 2021 Projects grant awardees!

We’re honored to support the work of these individuals, groups, and organizations and excited to see their projects unfold in the coming year. As COVID restrictions loosen in King County and we collectively emerge into a deeply changed world, we encourage you to also look to these projects for inspiration and healing. Browse them all:

Arts–Individuals
Arts–Groups
Heritage
Preservation

…and read up on a few highlights:

• “Telling Bothell’s Full Story” seeks to rewrite the accepted historical built environment narrative, one from the perspective of white settlers, to include the history of communities whose history has been glaringly absent. The Landmark Preservation Board will convene a task group to advise staff and guide project development and research.
• Monique Franklin will relaunch her preschool arts program Inspired Child Virtuoso Artist Labs by producing 48 free Virtual Classes for community and in-home daycares as well as recording a pilot episode of a web series.
• The Lee Arts Foundation is presenting Rock the Nation Music and Arts, a free festival in Carnation featuring local musicians and interactive art activities for the whole family.
• Artist Raven Two Feathers will create a documentary film series exploring Indigenous people who are shirking the gender binary and their experiences, juxtaposed to elements of the local lands and waters.
• Enumclaw’s Imagination Theatre, will teach theatre to youth of the Plateau culminating in the production of Seussical Jr, and a celebration on July 31 at McFarland park.
• In response to the recent spate of violence and hate towards the AAPI community, Juliana Kang Robinson will collaborate with local AAPI women artists to create a visual art campaign that promotes messaging of anti-hate and racial solidarity.
• Julie Seitz will research, prepare, and present a Landmark Nomination for the historic Seattle Pet Cemetery located in Kent.

Deep gratitude goes to our grant panelists, who carefully and thoughtfully evaluated each application and made tough funding decisions in an especially challenging year. Thank you for your dedication to King County culture!

Learn more about our Projects grants here.

This year, Washington State recognized Juneteenth as a paid state holiday after the dedicated advocacy of many. This day is commemorated on June 19 as a day of remembrance for the day enslaved African-Americans living in Texas learned of their freedom. The new law also encourages Washingtonians to use the day to revisit our solidarity and commitment to antiracism, educate ourselves about slave history, and continue having conversations that uplift every Washingtonian. Here are some ways to do that:

• Read this essay on Juneteenth written by Dr. Quintard Taylor, the founder of BlackPast.org.
• Watch this 2-minute mini-documentary also produced by BlackPast.
• As with all history…it’s complicated! We learned a lot from this article, which explores the complexities of Juneteenth.
• More reading! In case you missed it, the South Seattle Emerald published several great articles last year and a guide to events happening this year.
• Whether it’s virtual or in-person, attend a Juneteenth event—here are just a few being put on by King County organizations and individuals:

Juneteenth Week
All week; various times
Virtual events with the Northwest African American Museum and community partners.

ELEVATE (v.) raise or lift to a higher position
Wednesday, June 16 at 6:30 pm
Presented by Seattle Theatre Group in collaboration with Historian and President of the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, Stephanie Johnson-Toliver.

1619: Resistance / Resilience / Remembrance
Saturday, June 19, 2:00 pm
Virtual event featuring Mr. Delbert Richardson of the national award-winning American History Traveling Museum: The Unspoken Truths. Co-sponsored by BHS and MOHAI.

No Healing, No Peace: A Walking Meditation for Black Liberation
Saturday, June 19, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
Join Nile’s Edge Healing Arts for a guided walking meditation in Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Memorial Park.

This summer, art meets vaccines! We’re thrilled to partner with Public Health—Seattle & King County to use art to help get King County closer to its vaccination goals.

These art-filled vaccination events are called Vax to the Max, and they’ll feature performances by musicians from our Touring Arts Roster and custom buttons designed by local artists. Missing live music? This is a great way to experience it again! Want to let others know you’re vaccinated? Say it with an “I got vaccinated” button by artists Lilly Alexander, Raychelle Duazo, Kelly Froh, Elaine Lin, Teddy “Stat the Artist” Phillips, Fulgencio Lazo, Blanca Santander, and Sheri Stephens!

So far, this pilot program has brought Miz Floes and the Jazzy Sol Band and Elnah Jordan to Washington Hall in Seattle’s Central District, the Seattle Women’s Steel Pan Project to Kent’s ShoWare Events Center, and Mambo Cadillac to the vaccination site at the Auburn Outlet Collection.

Watch for more Vax to the Max programming through June at community vacination pop-ups throughout King County—we’ll share details as they’re confirmed.

The Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority (RTA) is celebrating the uniqueness of our place through a new storytelling campaign called Seattle Southside Scenes, designed to share extraordinary local stories with the world:

The heart of a region stems from the people of the place. The stories from a community give the region personality and meaning. And the people of Seattle Southside have some fascinating stories to tell!

The RTA is going behind the scenes of Seattle Southside’s most captivating public art locations, rich historical sites, and diverse cultural communities to tell the lesser-known tales of these sites in a new digital storytelling campaign and mobile Scenes Trail. As the regional destination marketing organization for the cities of SeaTac, Tukwila, and Des Moines, the RTA is uniquely positioned to uncover and tell these authentic, local stories that have largely existed only at the community level. By widening the audience to the world, visitors to Seattle Southside will now have a more intimate connection with the people who live and work here, enabling better travel experiences that are rich with meaning.

It is the backstory of “Big Catch” that evokes a sense of mystery as to the meaning behind the unusual public sculpture of a fisherman entangled with a fish, who strangely has breasts. The story behind the abandoned gravel pit turned public artwork, Robert Morris Earthwork, gives the carved terraced circles significance as the first land-reclamation sculpture in the nation. And the history of Duwamish Gardens and its connection to the legendary Pike Place Market makes visitors feel a sense of wonder while walking its trails.

Travelers are looking for more meaningful travel experiences and more intimate connections with the people of a destination. They want to feel something when they visit a place and understand what makes that place special. These are the hidden stories that live in the collective minds of the people who live here. These are the stories, like the one of the Good Bootlegger, Roy Olmstead, who ran one of the most successful bootlegging enterprises in the Country, that locals toast to in remembrance.

In a destination like Seattle Southside, which incorporates SEA, the 9^th busiest airport in the nation, visitors can sometimes see this region as a throughway, a place to stay the night before their flight, with an easily accessible freeway to go to where they are going. But the cities surrounding the Airport have intriguing sites with fascinating stories that visitors to the area might miss if not aware. These stories can encourage a traveler to exit the light rail at Angle Lake Station to spend some time admiring the shimmering “Cloud” art installation because, through these stories, they now know the interesting tale of its development.

For some, travel is more than a vacation; it is an opportunity to be in the exact spot where something real happened. Stories can draw in those visitors to stop in at the historic Zenith Holland Nursery, or to look for that mural on the side of the building, the one that depicts the first reported UFO sighting in the United States and the first description of “Men in Black”. These are the stories that remain with people after they return home.

It is also important to the RTA that this campaign brings to prominence voices that are often underrepresented. The communities of Seattle Southside are some of the most diverse in the country. People from over 50 countries of origin, speaking over 70 languages, call Seattle Southside their home. This diversity shines through in everything from the dining scene and unique shopping experiences to cultural events and festivals. The voices of people from all backgrounds contribute to a shared community experience. Like the stories from the ambitious women of Spice Bridge International Food Hall, whose passion for sharing their food traditions with others stems from their experience as immigrant women. Through these stories, the RTA hopes to encourage deeper understanding and appreciation for the multicultural community that is Seattle Southside.

Good storytelling can capture the senses by creating a sense of wonder, a curiosity for exploration, and an understanding that there is more to a place than meets the eye. Through this campaign, Seattle Southside RTA is connecting the traveler to the heart and soul of this place and to the authentic experiences this place offers for a more meaningful visit and more memorable experience.

We are honored to announce the recipients of our 2021 Arc Artist Fellowship!

The 2021 Fellows are:
Diego Binuya, Multi-media artist
Mikhail Calliste, Dancer Artist, Maker
Monyee Chau, Storyteller, Visual Artist
Joyee Runninghawk, Visual Artist
Kayla Stokes, Storyteller, Director, Aural Producer
Saiyana Suzumura, Visual Artist, Clothing Designer

The Arc Artist Fellowship provides critical—but rare—unrestricted awards of $12,000 to artists residing in King County. This year we received 37 highly competitive applications from King County artists working in dance, music, theater, media, literature, and the visual arts.

Executive Brian J. Carter says: “I would like to offer my congratulations to the 2021 Arc Artist Fellows. This accomplished group of young artists, storytellers, makers, and designers represent the broad and representational plurality of voices that are essential to our collective cultural health. During these trying times, it is more important than ever that we center voices that offer necessary and differing points of views that allow us to imagine a better future.”

Each year, a new cohort of Arc Fellows are selected, with an eligibility requirement that changes annually. This year, eligible applicants were artists between the ages of 18 and 25 who create artwork that examines and challenges structures of power in the fight for social justice.

Art has the power to be a catalyst for systemic change. We seek to celebrate and support young artist activists who are creating courageous work that moves us and makes us move. Often under-resourced and under-recognized, these artists are revealing and presenting paths to equity.

Arc Fellows will assist in determining the Arc Eligibility Requirement for next year’s fellowship as well as participate in a public cohort presentation organized by 4Culture and in planning and community engagement for the 2022 program.

Marketing support has been identified as a top priority for today’s working artist. The Arc Artist Fellowship will provide the Fellows with a page on the 4Culture website to use for promotional purposes, featuring images and links to explore their work.

Congratulations to Diego, Mikhail, Monyee, Joyee, Kayla, and Saiyana! Stay tuned to learn more about the 2021 Arc Fellows and how you can connect with their work.

As many of you are aware, most of the grant funds 4Culture distributes to the cultural sector come from King County Lodging Taxes. These tax proceeds are generated whenever people stay in local hotels and motels. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic recession, people are understandably not staying in hotels and motels with the same frequency. As a result, 4Culture recently learned that it will receive significantly less Lodging Tax revenue than anticipated in 2021. This does not impact 4Culture’s Public Art program, which is funded through a separate revenue source.

This news is significant for 4Culture and for you, the cultural community we work to support. Toward that end, I want to share our approach to this situation.

Our first step is to determine the exact reduction to 4Culture’s 2021 Lodging Tax revenue. Once we arrive at a better understanding of exactly how much our 2021 revenues will be reduced, we will look closely at the grant programs, projects, and initiatives we planned to undertake this year. We will need to determine which programs can move forward and which might move forward with reduced budgets. This work is happening right now, and I will do my best to keep you all informed as this evolves.

A few things I want to be clear about, at this time:

• 4Culture will honor all existing grant and contract obligations. If you have been awarded a grant from 4Culture, you will receive these funds.
• 4Culture will strategically evaluate all budgetary adjustment options in alignment with our mission, vision, and values as well as our firm commitment to prioritize the needs of the cultural community.
• 4Culture will proactively communicate with you about any changes that are made to the core funding programs everyone relies on.
• 4Culture is positioned well to weather this challenging moment and continue our work funding, supporting, and advocating for culture throughout King County.

More immediately, we have decided to reduce the amount of funding that will be available through our Projects grant program, which is open now. This difficult choice is made in response to our anticipated reduction in Lodging Tax revenue. Moreover, our choice to move the program forward with reduced funds recognizes the importance of this program to the creation, development, and implementation of cultural endeavors across the County. Our grant managers are here to answer your questions and discuss your application—their contact information is available at the Project grants guidelines.

Lastly, I want to let everyone know that we are currently working with the King County Executive and the King County Council to request additional funds via the recently passed American Rescue Plan. We are hopeful these funds will come to 4Culture for distribution to individuals and organizations throughout the cultural sector. We will keep you informed about this process as we learn more.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we work through this latest challenge amidst an already challenging time. I am confident that the creativity, resilience, and fiscal stewardship 4Culture and King County are known for will see us through this moment.

Sincerely,
Brian J. Carter

This month, we get ready to say goodbye to Charlie Rathbun, who is retiring after nearly 30 years at 4Culture—which was known as the King County Arts Commission at the time Charlie joined! Here, 4Culture staff and friends share their thoughts and wishes for our Arts Program Director:

“If there’s one thing to know about Charlie, it’s that he has a particular affection for the emergent: the emerging artist, the new theatre company, the green city arts administrator. Charlie is a sucker for possibility. And his cowboy countenance is a dead giveaway that he sees more than meets the eye; he’s about to place a bet. When I look out at the arts landscape in King County today, I mostly see Charlie’s bets. He’s given thousands of people, organizations, and communities their big break or the lifeline they needed to get from one year to the next.

Charlie has been with us from the beginning. He’s shaped every curve and angle, worked with everyone past and present. And to imagine 4Culture—and indeed the whole of the arts community—without Charlie seems nearly impossible. Who else as a heart and mind that big to hold us all? Perhaps Charlie’s biggest gift to us was that after all this time he taught us how to bet on ourselves. Which is precisely what this moment demands from us.”
—Joshua Heim, Deputy Director

“When people ask where I work and I tell them 4Culture, the next question is “Do you work with Charlie?!” Then they launch into a story about how Charlie helped them find – 50 tutus, a grassy field, a gumball machine – whatever crazy thing they needed for their art project. He’s not a bureaucrat, he’s an arts advocate. I can’t believe he’s gonna go. We love you Charlie.”
—Heather Dwyer, Arts Program Manager

“If you were to somehow look at most of the amazing or groundbreaking artistic happenings that have brightened the lives of King County residents during the past 20-plus years, chances are Charlie Rathbun was somewhere behind the scenes at each of those. Not only does he care deeply about artists, but he is one of those rare administrators whose first instinct is an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ We’ll all miss that.”
—Lucia Neare, artist

“Charlie Rathbun—in addition to be a cheerful, buoyant person who never fails to bring positive energy into any conversation—has been a guiding light for me. He champions serving our constituents over adhering to bureaucratic restrictions. He always wants to explore and experiment, both in the arts themselves and in how we fund them. He represents, to me, the spirit of 4Culture at its best.”
—Bret Fetzer, Arts Program Manager

“Thank you for being my mentor, guide and best friend here since the beginning. You’re the heart of this outfit and I will deeply miss your presence. For all the joy and goodwill you’ve spread for the past thirty years, you deserve the best and most fun retirement ever!”
—Doreen Mitchum, Arts Program Manager

“When I think about 4Culture, Charlie Rathbun is as much the visual image for me as the logo. He has been such an important part of this agency’s growth and development and he has inspired, innovated, guided and helped us find the joy in what King County has to offer us all through arts and culture. Charlie will be sorely missed, but make no mistake, his fingerprint is on so much of the organization’s work and will live on. Thank you Charlie for all of your contributions and all the best for an incredibly well-deserved retirement!”
—Vivian Phillips, 4Culture Board President

“You will be missed not only at 4Culture, but in the arts community in King County. When I think about you and your work, the one thing that stands out to me was your unfailing admiration for and love of artists, which was evident in every action you were engaged in for almost three decades. Others may not realize the essential role you played in expanding arts opportunities in the suburbs and in the rural parts of the county through the local arts agency network that you hosted for twenty years. You were a great colleague who constantly pushed to do the next big thing, to “bust a move,” when we were getting too complacent. Enjoy the next chapter.”
—Jim Kelly, former 4Culture Executive Director

“Charlie has an incredible ability to see the positive in every project and every person. Possessing a strong desire and tireless effort to make every project work for its community, he always leaves a positive and encouraging impact in everything he touches. I don’t think I have ever met a more gracious, hard working and humble person in my arts career.”
—Stephen Elliot, former 4Culture Board President

“Charlie knows every single arts group in King County. His unique Site Specific program brings creative expression to communities in every corner of King County, and his decades of dedication to promoting local arts agencies and advisors with patience and charm are legendary. I was so very lucky to learn from him.”
—Deb Twersky, former 4Culture Deputy Director

4Culture Heritage is now accepting remote internship proposals from heritage organizations in King County! Proposal deadline is at 5:00 pm PST on January 15, 2021.

The King County Heritage Internship Program has been part of our heritage capacity-building programs since 2018. In the past, we paired graduate students with host sites around the county to complete help complete projects—you can read testimonials from interns in 2018 and 2019. After the cancellation of the 2020 program due to COVID-19, we have reformatted the program to adapt to the reality of social distancing, to be open to the varying needs of heritage organizations during this time, and to be more inclusive for possible host sites.

In this iteration of the program, we are seeking engaging internship ideas that target a specific challenge that your organization is currently facing. We will select up to three heritage organizations to participate as remote host sites during the summer of 2021. We will ask that host sites to participate in orientation, communicate with the interns throughout the run of the internship, and participate in program evaluation at the end. We will provide stipends for the interns, administrative support in intern management, and overall project management.

Applicants can submit proposals by completing an application on the 4Culture grant portal and updating their 2021 demographic information. Please read this document for the full proposal instructions.

If you wish to learn more about the program or would like assistance creating an effective proposal, please join us for a virtual workshop on Wednesday, November 18, at 12:00 pm—register here.

Questions? Contact Megumi Nagata, Heritage Support Specialist, at or 206-263-3474.

We are happy to announce UrbanRock Design as the artist team selected to work with 4Culture and our partners at the King County Wastewater Treatment Division (WTD). Based in Los Angeles, California, UrbanRock Design is the collaborative partnership of Jeanine Centuori and Russell Rock who have experience working on a range of public projects in a breadth of materials. The artist team will create a site-specific public artwork as part of the new Jameson building in the Interbay Industrial Area of Seattle, Washington.

To get a better understanding of the Jameson project, the current site houses employees who support construction, operations, and maintenance of King County’s regional sewer system. The WTD workers, who are based at this site, build and maintain sewer infrastructure that serves about a 100-square mile service area. One of the exciting aspects of the new Jameson building is WTD’s commitment to the Living Building Challenge (LBC) which is a goal of King County. The LBC certification fit well with the integrated design of the project and represents a holistic measure of sustainability in order to achieve a high level of green building goals. UrbanRock is mindful of environmental and sustainable practice in public art, which is in alignment with the principals of the LBC and goals of the Jameson project. The artists have a sustainable approach to art with experience working on green architecture as well as an interest in utilizing locally sourced and recycled materials.

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the artists have been able to build a successful and supportive long distance and remote working relationship with 4Culture, the project team and WTD project stakeholders. Jeanine and Russell are finding inspiration in this work and the dedication and stewardship of the workers. They are exploring details of the existing and future facility, from how the users will engage in the site to creating art that will contribute to a healthy and productive workspace – a goal of the LBC. We look forward to sharing more about this process as it unfolds and the creation of art that will celebrate the essential work of WTD and their connection to clean water in our region.