The Washington Museum Association (WaMA) was established to represent and serve museums of all types and sizes throughout Washington State. WaMA offers an annual conference for peer-to-peer learning, networking, and idea exchange. The 2020 Washington Museum Association Conference will take place June 17 – 19, 2020 in Olympia, WA. This year’s theme is Museums and Democracy: Advocate, Educate, Participate.

To support professional development of heritage professionals in King County, we are offering four $500 stipends to individuals presenting at this year’s WaMA conference. The deadline to apply is March 13, 2020 at 5:00 pm PST.

To be eligible for a Presenter Stipend, you must present at the conference and be a King County resident, as well as a staff member, board member, volunteer, or intern at a heritage organization in King County, or a consultant, service provider, or independent historian who primarily works with King County heritage. 4Culture stipends may be used for conference registration, and to defray travel and lodging costs. To receive the stipend, you must attend and present at the conference and be prepared to write a brief statement about your experiences.

To apply, please submit a letter of interest via email. The letter should be no longer than two pages, including your daytime phone number, mailing and email addresses. The letter should include the following:

Itemized budget of conference attendance.

• Your current status with a King County heritage museum or organization.
• Title and abstract of your presentation.
• State the significance of your presentation subject to the heritage field. Connection to the key findings of 4Culture Heritage Report is a plus but not required.
• Please share how your conference participation will impact your career, your affiliated institution, and the heritage field. How will you utilize the information, connections, and inspirations you gain from attending the conference for your professional goals, your institution, and/or future of the heritage field?

Email your letter of interest to Megumi Nagata at with the subject line WaMA 2020 Presenter Stipend.

4Culture staff will review and select applications based on:

Evidence of research on the cost, the conference, and WaMA.

• How clearly your interests or goals for career, affiliated institution, and the heritage field are articulated.
• How well your interests and goals align with the conference offering and WaMA’s mission.
• How well you illustrate the significance of their presentation to the heritage field.

We will notify stipend recipients via e-mail by March 20. Please contact Megumi Nagata, 4Culture Heritage Support Specialist, with any questions at or 206-263-3474.

We are honored to announce the recipients of the 2020 Arc Artist Fellowship!

The 2020 Fellows are:
Dani Tirrell, Dancer and Choreographer
Bernadette Merikle, Visual, Sound, and Performance Artist
E.T. Russian, Graphic Novelist and Multi-Sensory Artist
Anastacia-Reneé Tolbert, Interdisciplinary Artist
Storme Webber, Interdisciplinary Artist

The Arc Artist Fellowship provides critical—but rare—unrestricted awards of $12,000 to artists residing in King County. This year we received 35 highly competitive applications from King County artists working in dance, music, theater, media, literature, and the visual arts.

4Culture Executive Director Brian J. Carter says, “I am incredibly proud of the Arc Artist Fellowship program, including its past award recipients and this year’s Fellows. The arts provide the perfect opportunity to grapple with and engage the wide spectrum of human emotions and experiences—but this is only possible if artists, who have lived that full range of humanity, are adequately supported. 4Culture is thrilled to be partnering with artists at the center of this work.”

Each year, a new cohort of Arc Fellows are selected, with an eligibility requirement that changes annually. This year, eligible applicants are artists over 40 years of age who identify transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, Two-Spirit people, and anyone whose gender identity or gender expression is nonconforming.

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 2021 program.

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

Congratulations to Dani, Bernadette, E.T., Anastacia-Reneé, and Storme! Stay tuned to learn more about the 2020 Arc Fellows and how you can connect with their work.

The Bothell Landmark Preservation Board (LPB) is a seven-member advisory board tasked with identifying and encouraging the conservation of the city’s historic resources. In addition to maintaining the Bothell Register of Historic Landmarks and reviewing new downtown development, some of their projects include a survey of Bothell’s mid-century resources, their book Bothell Then and Now, and a downtown walking tour. Here, they share how 4Culture fundind has supported those efforts this past year:

Downtown Bothell is changing! Over the last several years, the LPB has watched as multi-story, mixed-use buildings have replaced many of the historic homes and commercial buildings in the city’s downtown core. While necessary to accommodate an influx of new residents, the danger of losing Bothell’s sense-of-place is very real. Last year, the LPB tasked their staff consultant with developing a project that would examine the area’s remaining historic resources with the hope of guiding some property owners toward rehabilitation rather than demolition.

Bothell’s Downtown Landmark and Historic District Feasibility Study was devised to take a look at all of the pre-1980 buildings downtown, especially the ones along Main Street, and determine how many of them would qualify for the local register. Yes, that says pre-1980! In a broad study like this it was important to look at buildings that could become eligible in the next few years. Not to mention that some of the building styles from the 1970s and 1980s are now recognized as historically significant.

The study found that downtown Bothell could support a local register historic district centered around Main Street. Of the 54 buildings studied, half are potentially eligible either individually or as a contributing property in a historic district. Nearly half of those were either built or “modernized” during the mid-20th century period. When people think about a city’s historic Main Street or downtown core, the earliest buildings often come to mind but their midcentury counterparts and modernizations can often be just as significant on their own.

Looking through photographs of Bothell’s Main Street from before 1900 through the 1970s and ‘80s up to the present told an interesting story of evolution. Small wooden buildings constructed at the end of the 19th century were replaced with brick and concrete storefronts in the early decades of the 20th century. A little later, in the late-1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, many of those brick storefronts on Main Street were “modernized,” meaning that outdated historic styles were covered with new Streamlined Moderne, Art Deco and Googie facades. Some of those remain, like at Three Lions Pub and Hana Sushi, but others were covered again later in the century with Mansard-esque facades. Today, there are a mix of building styles and eras represented downtown.

Another part of the study’s mission was to inform property owners about the various financial incentives available to help with building rehabilitation: Special Tax Valuation, Federal Historic Tax Credits and, of course, the 4Culture Landmarks Capital grant! Each building was evaluated with a brief section about which incentives might apply. Telling the story of Bothell’s downtown development, the study is a vehicle that will help residents and property owners see the significance of individual buildings, both old and not-so-old, and how they fit into the history of downtown. Hopefully, owners of downtown properties will be inspired to nominate their buildings to the local register and take advantage of some of the financial incentives available for rehabilitation.

In 2016, we published a survey study on the state of the Heritage field in King County. The findings showed a need for skill-based training and professional development opportunities for practitioners in the field. While many conferences and trainings are available nationwide, attending can be cost-prohibitive—our expanded stipend program aims to close the gap.

Stipends of $200 to $600 are now available to subsidize the cost of registration, travel, and lodging for conferences or trainings provided by a heritage professional association. Eligible applicants must be over 18 years old, a King County resident, and a staff member, board member, volunteer, or intern at a heritage organization in King County, or a consultant, service provider, or independent historian who primarily works with King County heritage. There is no deadline—applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. You may apply multiple times, but can only receive one award per year. Please note that we offer a separate stipend to attend the Washington Museums Association annual conference.

The application will consist of the following questions:

• Name of the presenting organization and title, date, and location of the professional development opportunity.
• Will you attend this conference as a presenter? If yes, title of your presentation and presenting format (panel, keynote, tabling, poster session, etc.).
• Your current status with a King County heritage museum or organization. If you are not affiliated with a specific institution, please describe your connection to King County heritage field.
• Volunteer or Intern applicant – Name and contact information of Volunteer Manager or your supervisor for reference
• Please explain how this opportunity and your participation will address new thinking or solutions to one or more key findings of the Heritage Report.
• Please explain how your participation will impact your career and your professional development. How will you utilize the information, connections, and inspirations you gain from attending this opportunity for your professional goals?
• Please explain how you plan to share information or use the training in your affiliated institution or your practice. How will your colleagues, your clients, or your affiliated institution benefit from you attending this opportunity? Alignment with your affiliated institution’s strategic goals is a plus but not required.
• Itemized budget of conference attendance and how you plan to subsidize the cost if the requested amount does not cover the entire cost. Please explain your institution’s policy on funding staff’s professional development.

To apply, please contact Megumi Nagata at to begin the process, and include “Heritage Professional Development Stipends” in the email subject.

We will review applications based on the following criteria:

• Evidence of research on the cost, the conference/training, and the presenting organization.
• How clearly your interests and goals for your career, affiliated institution, and the heritage field are articulated.
• How well you connect your interests to the conference or training.
• How well you demonstrate your plan to share information or use knowledge for your affiliate institution.
• How well you draw connections between your reasons for attending the conference or training and the Heritage Report key findings. Presenting in some capacity is a plus but not required (includes tabling).
• Whether your affiliated institution funds professional development for staff.

We will notify all qualified applicants via email within four weeks of recevining an application. To receive payment, recipients must provide an attendance report and a final expense sheet to 4Culture. The attendance report should include a narrative about your experience at the training or conference, findings or lessons learned, and, if presenting, how many attended your session.

For questions, please contact: Megumi Nagata, 4Culture Heritage Support Specialist, or 206-263-3474.

Revisiting Washington is a web-based update to the 1941 Washington, A Guide to the Evergreen State, published through the Federal Writers’ Project American Guide Series. With support from 4Culture and other unders, the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation has complemented the original text with new tours focused on Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander heritage, and a tour highlighting sites associated with African-American heritage is in the works for 2020. Here, Chris Moore, Executive Director of the Washington Trust, provides insight into how the project took shape:

Over a decade ago, we began work to digitize the rich content included in the 1941 Federal Writers’ Project American Guide Series: Washington, A Guide to the Evergreen State. As part of this special project beneath the umbrella of the Works Progress Administration, writers and photographers set off across the state to capture a moment in time and to document 1941 life in Washington. Predating the interstate freeway system, intrepid travelers took what today we call the “slow roads.”

It turns out these slow roads – what today essentially constitutes our state route system – provided a poignant portrait of the state. Tours in the guidebook meander through dense forests, agricultural areas, river valleys, and high plains, with associated text providing an informative backdrop as you travel from one landscape to the next. Traversing all 39 counties, these tours often terminated (or originated, depending on which direction you were headed) in our county seats. The guide text includes descriptions of key buildings and landmarks in these cities and towns, providing a true sense of main street life in our smaller, more rural communities.

We distributed the first iteration of Revisiting Washington as a CD-ROM which, given the speed technology progresses, proved to be obsolete nearly the day it was completed. Learning from this, we set out to develop a web-based version, available as a phone app with the capability to be updated and added to. Working on this version of the project, it became very clear that elements of our state’s history were glaringly missing. The narrative voice from 1941 did indeed provide rich content – valuable information for understanding that point in time. But it was not an especially diverse illustration of Washington State life. Aside from brief mentions, communities of color, non-European immigration, and tribal representation are relatively absent from the guide.

To address this, we envisioned a series of tours focused on sites associated with communities that have impacted Washington in deep and transformative ways. Maintaining the 1941 guidebook protocol, the new tours would be geographically discrete and focused on actual locations able to still be experienced by road trippers. The first of these focused on Japanese-American heritage on Vashon Island, highlighting nine sites, several of which are farms documenting the Japanese and Japanese-American impact on the island’s agricultural practices and economy. The second endeavored to highlight sites in the Yakima Valley associated with Latino heritage. Another 10 sites were added, again largely agricultural but including places important as social gathering spaces and cultural centers for the valley’s burgeoning Latino community.

Most recently, we completed a King County-based tour of sites representing Latino heritage. Given migration patterns, there are clear ties between the county’s flourishing Latino communities and the history of migrant labor supporting agriculture in the Yakima Valley. Over two dozen sites cover education, civil rights, religion, local business, and education. From South Park to White Center, from the Central District to the University District, extant sites featured on the King County tour cover a broad range of issues. Exclusive video interviews provide additional insight for those interested.

These tours are critically important elements of our Revisiting Washington platform. They highlight existing places and buildings that serve as anchors for the communities they represent despite being overlooked as “architectural” landmarks. They give bricks-and-mortar presence to stories too often hidden from mainstream narrative. This work coincides with efforts by the National Park Service to more fully understand and acknowledge the contributions of underrepresented communities. NPS funding has supported survey work for Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander heritage in Washington State, and our tours benefited greatly from these surveys. In fact, three of the sites included in our King County tour will be added to the National Register of Historic Places. There are so many Places That Matter across Washington. Yes, we should preserve the stately manors and monumental civic buildings. But we should also work to save the farmsteads, labor camps, social halls, and places of worship associated with all people whose legacy have enriched our state.

Our Storefront Media Gallery is a video art exhibition space, displaying dynamic work from across the U.S. to an audience on the go. Comprised of four screens, the Storefront Media Gallery is located in 4Culture’s large windows, facing Prefontaine Place South in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle. Two directional speakers are mounted on the exterior of the building, broadcasting sound to passers-by. Artworks are scheduled to play through a playback system, which loops daily from 7:00 am until 10:00 pm. The entire program usually rotates about once every hour.

Earlier this year, jurors Gazelle Samizay and Ezra Wube reviewed applications submitted through a national open call process and selected eleven new artists, beginning in 2020. The next time you find yourself on our street, take a break in front of the Storefront screens to experience their work!

Jake Couri, Alpine, NJ
Couri will utilize the multiple screens format to expand upon their work, Find Your Ritual, with the build out of animation in a way that utilizes each of the screens as if it has its own camera angle within the animation. Couri will also explore the use of subtitles.

Lauren Dake, Seattle, WA
Dake will expand a series of video vignettes entitled, Monoliths. This project is based on personal feelings of isolation, detachment and a sense of impending doom. It is influenced by 90’s science-fiction and fantasy films, and is a response to the post-internet static hum of our current culture.

Leslie Foster, Los Angeles, CA
Foster’s work is rooted in queer and Black futurity. They will adapt and present recently created work entitled, Etude #1, 59.9 and 59.10 sequentially playing across all four screens.

Adam Jabari Jefferson, Seattle, WA
Jabari will simultaneously display the interwoven themes of recent work, which includes: I Was, I Am, and I Will, which explores grounding and memory as a means of moving forward.

Rachel Lodge, Seattle, WA
For most people carbon is an abstraction. Lodge will create an animation sequence that lets people see the actual flow of carbon dioxide all around us, both in nature and through our own actions, which is normally invisible to us.

Chris Lowery, Brooklyn, NY
Lowery will create videos of their collection of Rolodexes. Set to music, which will be playing through a computer, these videos will show Lowery’s hands flipping through their Rolodex.

Berette Macaulay, Everett, WA
Macaulay will create new two and three channel abstract narrative work, which will explore their interest in transcultural identities. She is interested in examining collective interpretations of belonging, (re)connection, (in)visibility, and media (re)presentation in any work that strives to resolve objectified ideas of “difference’—specifically when coded as either “dangerous” or commodifiable.

Sri Prabha, Hollywood, FL
4Culture welcomes Sri Prabha back to the Storefront Media Gallery. Prabha is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Hyderabad, India who integrates into his aesthetic process tenants of geography, nature, time, human origins, and the cosmos. Prabha asks how our intellectual understandings compare with our emotional responses to scientific discoveries. They will be exhibiting Brahama 3, a three channel 1080P video.

Rebecca Shapass, Staten Island, NY
Shapass will create a silent, three-channel work that meditates on forms of symmetry found in living organisms. Using a green screen technology, they will construct these images using vibrantly colored, digitally abstracted videos of truncated parts of their own body. Through the combination of abstract images, whole forms will emerge.

Emily Tanner-McLean, Seattle, WA
Tanner-McLean will share their work, Flower/Thorn, a video resembling Victorian-style wallpaper, a work-in-progress, this work will arrange footage of a hand caressing the petals of red roses then gripping their thorny stems in a repetitious pattern.

Gordon Winiemko, Long Beach, CA
Filmed in Seattle, this work by Winiemko addresses gentrification and development that is displacing residents and businesses, exacerbating homelessness, and transforming the character of the city.

If you’re wondering how to spend these cold winter months, you’re in luck—this year brought an influx of incredible new heritage experiences to our region. Across King County, long-planned projects came to life as four much-loved heritage organizations moved collections, installed exhibits, and finally opened the doors to their new facilities.

Each one is an incredible feat! We’re proud to have supported them all through a myriad of grants over the years. Whether you’re entertaining out-of-town guests or need some solo time away from the shopping crowds, these newly opened heritage sites will keep you warm and inspired about the dynamic history of our region:

• • Wagner Education Center at the Center for Wooden Boats
    Open Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm; free admission
  • Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture 
    Open Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm; free admission
  • Highline Heritage Museum
    Open Tuesday through Sunday, 12:00 to 7:00 pm; $8 general admission
  • Burke Museum
    Open daily 10:00 am to 5:00 pm; $22 general admission

As 2019 comes to a close, we’re getting ready to dive into a new year of grants, starting with Projects, one of our biggest funding programs. We checked in with some our grant managers to find out what advice they have for folks planning to apply this coming year. Even though the grants they manage all differ, we heard strong common themes that can help you not only with Projects, but all 4Culture grants—and probably even with grants from other funders. Happy applying!

1. Start early

Every grant manager we talked to echoed this one: start early. Heather Dwyer, who administers our Art Projects grant for individuals, says, “More than half of the applications I receive for the program arrive in the last 24 hours before the deadline. They shouldn’t! It’s stressful for them and administrators can’t offer as much help as we’d like at the last minute.” We typically open applications 6–8 weeks before a deadline—you can start your application and save it as a draft right up until you click submit. Melissa Newbill, who manages our Open4Culture grant, says, “Save often!” Plus, getting started early gives you plenty of time to follow our next piece of advice…

2. Read everything

When you first check out a guidelines page for a grant you’re interested in, it can be a daunting amount of information—but it really is all important. Again, all of our grant managers agree: read the guidelines in full before starting the application. Brandi Link, Preservation Special Projects manager, recommends tackling this in a way that works best for you: “Print them out, write questions on them, highlight, circle text, whatever you need to do to process the information.” Chieko Phillips, who manages Heritage Projects, adds “Pay extra attention to the review criteria. These are what grant reviewers weigh your application against when they are reading and scoring your applications and can help you decide how you describe your project.”

3. Reach out

We list contact names, emails, and phone numbers for all of our grants for a reason. “Get in touch with that person about your interest in applying. Not only if you have questions—introduce yourself and your ideas,” says Brandi. A reminder from Melissa: grant managers will even review your draft application if you send it to them at least two weeks before the deadline. Heather recommends that applicants make sure to, “use any and all assistance offered by the grantmaker. Attend workshops, review sample applications from past applicants, email or call with specific questions.” Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We know applying for grants isn’t easy!

4. Understand the grant

Every funding organization and grant is different, and your application will almost always be one of many. First, make sure you qualify for the grant: “I receive applications every year from artists who have spent many hours on an application that’s not eligible. It breaks my heart!” Next, do your research. Heather says, “Artists should find out why and how the grantmaker offers funding. What is the organization’s motivation? Where do the funds come from? Knowing this will help the artist understand if the grant is a good fit and use language that is relevant to the grantmaker.” Finally, understand that your application will be evaluated in a pool of other applicants. “Grants are competitive,” says Brandi. “So, do everything you can to make your application as competitive as possible: be realistic with your budget, write clearly, and give as many details about the project as you can.”

Get involved with this project!
Wednesday, December 11, 3:00—6:00 pm
Hop on a parked Metro bus for interactive art, music, poetry and wellness (more details)
RapidRide C Line, 2615 SW Barton Street across from Westwood Village

4Culture and King County Metro are pleased to share that artist team Johnson Ramirez have been selected to create a system-wide Art Plan for the RapidRide Expansion Program. Kristen Ramirez and Elisheba Johnson are both artists and public art project managers working here in the region. Collectively, they see public art as a practice that embraces “public” and “art” as equal sides of the same equation. When they approach projects, they begin by asking three fundamental questions: who works here? Who plays here? Who lives here? They believe every project ought to begin with meaningful engagement with the people who occupy a place, whether through questionnaires, storytelling, historical research, or celebration. The poetry-based performance shown above, Radical Self Love Seattle, captures their first collaboration together as artists. The project posited the question “what is self-love?” at a time that they, as two divorced moms seeking love while working jobs championing other artists, wished to champion themselves, too.

In anticipation of this project, they say that, “Rapid Ride is vitally important to transforming everyone’s commute, from our youth going to school, to our elders running errands. Reliable and convenient transit options are part of equitable urban planning. This is an exciting moment to imagine how art can transform bus rider’s lives.” Over the next six months, Johnson Ramirez will be analyzing and identifying opportunities to integrate art across the RapidRide system and on a line-by-line basis. Their work will culminate in a conceptual framework for system-wide and community-specific art integration and intervention. This Art Plan will directly inform how 4Culture and Metro prioritize future artist opportunities, and will be a living document that adapts and responds to the evolving RapidRide Expansion program over the next 7–10 years. Although the plan will lay a foundation for other artists’ work, Johnson Ramirez will have the opportunity to propose ideas for their own artwork for the expanded RapidRide system, or a particular line and location. They will launch their work with a community engagement event in December—stay tuned for details.

RapidRide is King County Metro’s premiere service: arterial bus rapid transit. First implemented in 2009, there are six existing lines (A-F) serving King County today. Each day, these lines carry almost 20% of the over 400,000 daily Metro transit trips taken around the Seattle region and represent one of the busiest bus rapid transit systems in the nation. King County and the Seattle region are experiencing unprecedented population growth. To meet the ever-increasing demand for high quality transit service, a massive expansion of the RapidRide system, King County Metro’s arterial bus rapid transit service, is underway. Seven new lines are planned to launch between 2021 and 2027.

Through annual internships, we support research on King County historic properties to inform the work of our Beyond Integrity group—visit that page to explore the work of previous interns. This past year, intern Tera Williams tackled surveys and inventories, which are often the first step in identifying significant historic properties in an area. How do local survey methods line up with national standards? Here, she shares about her process and findings:

Going into the position, I was very excited to learn more about the specific preservation issues in the area. I wanted to better contextualize how historic preservation should fit within equitable revitalization and what was preventing that from happening. Luckily, the focus of my internship allowed me to get a broad overview of how preservation functions on a county and city level. My internship work happened in two research phases. First, I analyzed preservation survey and inventory methodology in Seattle and King County to see where the process was straying from the most equitable path. For the second phase, I worked together with Beyond Integrity to select a Seattle and a King County survey to examine for equitable practices and create two embedded case studies. I was then able to come back to the survey and inventory methodology and combine that with the things I learned in the case studies to create recommendations.

As I got further along in the research process, the true nature of the work began to unfold itself. The more I worked, the more it became evident that having a solid survey and inventory methodology is often the deciding factor for whether or not cultural assets are detected. In my case studies, I looked at the Vogue Hotel/VAIN in Seattle and the Yasamura’s Packing Shed in Auburn. The Vogue has been a counterculture hub for decades and was the site of Nirvana’s first Seattle show and the Yasamura’s Packing Shed was the place where Japanese Americans boarded trains to internment camps during WWII. The sites both represented values that were important to specific communities, but would not necessarily be picked up in the ordinary survey process. Through comparing these case studies, I learned the importance of using the context statement to guide the survey and inventory process and talking to the community to see what assets they value within the community.

My biggest takeaway from this process was not to take anything at face value. The sites themselves and the historic preservation process have more depth to them than I initially assumed. Looking at the process from the terminology to survey and inventory methodology, I found that while things had been designed to preserve dominant American cultural assets, it was not strictly structured to exclude assets of marginalized communities. Rather, the system was created to be open to interpretation and was not being utilized procedurally to its maximum potential. While integrity has been recognized as architectural integrity, it is not defined on a local level and on the national level, it is defined as the integrity of meaning. Unpacking and expanding our working knowledge of the preservation process and retraining local preservation professionals with new, more equitable, guidelines and definitions of terms is the key to being able to achieve landmark status for cultural assets that do not have architectural integrity, but retain integrity of meaning.

Our Rural Heritage Internship Program connects skilled interns with heritage organizations located outside of Seattle. In its second year, we have partnered with Des Moines Historical Society and Issaquah History Museum as the host sites of the internships. Three students from University of Washington Museology Graduate Program and Museum Studies Certificate Program started their internships in June 2019, and have been working on various projects such as evaluation, collections management, and public relations at their host sites. Here, we have asked them to share their experiences:

Johanna Berliner is working on audience evaluation at Issaquah Historical Museums:
My learning goals for this internship revolved around coming into my own as a professional: managing and planning projects, developing skills in leadership and finding confidence in decision-making. Issaquah History Museums has treated me like a consultant, which means I’ve been able to make major decisions about my projects and take ownership of those decisions. Working so closely with a small, rural institution has given me a better sense of what evaluation can look like in the field, the amount of collaboration it takes to implement, and how to deal with difficulties when they arise.

Working with a smaller, rural institution also means working on a smaller scale than the large evaluation projects I’ve done through my program, so I’ve also learned to think strategically about what kind of work is most useful for the organization. I’ve refocused to create evaluation tools IHM can use to continue to get feedback on their programs once my internship ends, without putting strain on their staff resources. Through this experience, as a stronger collaborator and more confident decision-maker, I’m better-equipped to do more kinds of evaluation projects in the future.

Andrea McKeever is working on collections management at Des Moines Historical Society:
My learning goals for the rural internship program developed over the course of my project. Initially I planned to focus on entering information from paper files into a PastPerfect catalog. By following this plan, I would increase my knowledge of PastPerfect and my abilities to manage a long term, detailed project. After spending time at the Des Moines Historical Society, I shifted my learning goals to develop materials that teach how to use PastPerfect. Currently my focus is making PastPerfect training manuals for the museum’s volunteers. These manuals use screenshots to illustrate how to perform tasks including cataloging, records management, and collection searches. I am also working with the organization’s volunteer collections manager to create basic records and authority files that future volunteers and interns can build on.

So far, my experiences in the rural internship program have allowed me to expand my knowledge of PastPerfect and my teaching abilities. Working at the Des Moines Historical Society has challenged me to be flexible and aware of how my project fits into the organization’s other priorities and resources. I am confident that my mastery of PastPerfect, my ability to teach and work with volunteers, and my ability to adapt to and work with an organization’s needs and resources will help me thrive in the non-profit heritage field.

Melody Smith is working on public relations at Des Moines Historical Society:
My name is Melody, and I am working with the Des Moines Historical Society through the Rural Heritage Internship. While 4Culture assigned me to work on DMHS’s marketing plan, it became apparent that they also needed an update of branding. As I set to work, my learning goals focused on learning how to build community engagement. Through talking with the community, understanding marketing channels, and envisioning a historical society that reflected the needs of its people, I learned not only how to create ties to the community, but how necessary historical societies are for the rural communities they support.

Through this program, I had the opportunity to reach out to a rural community, hear their stories, learn their passion for local history, and further understand the importance of investing in smaller historical societies. As I go forward in my career, my work in the program has deepened my understanding of who we do our work for and why it matters. Our rural communities hold immense value for the future of the heritage field and investing in the heritage of these communities will pay dividends long into the future. I am greatly appreciative for my time working for 4Culture and the Des Moines Historical Society.

For more information about the Rural Heritage Internship Program, please contact Megumi Nagata at .

In September we welcomed Laura Elizabeth Becker as Senior Project Manager in our Public Art Department. Laura has been a champion for arts and culture for nearly 20 years, producing public art projects in Seattle, Spokane, Santa Monica, Beaverton, and more—so we weren’t surprised when she opted to introduce herself via some of the artists she’s partnered with.

We asked Deborah Ascheim, Ellen Picken, and Juan Alonso-Rodriguez—all artists who have created work for a project managed by Laura—to share something about our new colleague. Advising that, “the artists that get to work with her will understand what I mean,” Juan says, “…she helped me navigate through a project that at times I felt I wanted to give up on, but with her assistance and ability to push forward, I was able to visualize and see the project through to a glorious end result.” Ellen echoed this sentiment, saying, “…she inspires the introvert to be bold, ignites enthusiasm and participation among the community, and will even get messy installing the artwork with the artist. She’s got your back.” According to Deborah, she brings a “forward-looking and inclusive approach” to her projects: “Laura is incredibly thoughtful about public art, what it is, what it could be, and who it is for.”

Laura even drew on an artist partnership when it came time to select an image for this post—see her portrait by Kelly Bjork! It’s clear that Laura has an impact on the arts wherever she goes, and we’re so excited about what’s to come here at 4Culture. Say hello next time you’re at our Pioneer Square offices, and watch for Laura doing work all over King County.

It’s been a bittersweet month at 4Culture! After 20 years managing our funding programs Deputy Director Deb Twersky retired, leaving an incredible legacy of compassionate and expert support for cultural organizations in King County. Stepping into the role is Joshua Heim, who comes to us from the City of Bellevue’s Arts Program and Community Development Department. In the midst of reviewing budgets and project files as they passed the baton, the two sat down for a conversation to look back as well as forward. The edited transcript is below:

Joshua Heim: Deb!

Deb Twersky: Josh!

JH: Hey, you’ve been working here for a long time. In arts and culture, probably even longer.

DT: Yeah!

JH: So what’s changed and what’s stayed the same all these years?

DT: When I started working, I thought I would be working in museums. That’s where I worked first, and at that time, the museum world was 100% male and white, and museum leaders were making a transition from being very wealthy people who had these collections that turned into museums. And it wasn’t really even a legitimate line of business. It wasn’t something you went to school for, you just became the museum director. It was this sort of rarefied atmosphere. So that part of working in this field is just fundamentally revolutionized, right? Completely changed. The workforce has changed. The nature of this as a business. Think about the value of the U.W. Museology program, or the Seattle U Arts Leadership Program. There was no such thing at that time. It’s fundamentally shifted the kind of people in the field. The kind of things we aspire to.

So what hasn’t changed at all is the arts at the center of it, the artists. The creative people, the writers, the historians who want to change the status quo and want to use their voice, their vision to make the world a different place. And this overwhelming and overriding sense of culture as being a thing that binds us together, and that lets us imagine each other’s worlds. That was always at the center of it. It might have been at the center of it for those guys who are opening their family’s mansion and collected stuff, but it certainly has been the one throughline for me in our work.

Think about 4Culture and King County 10 years from now. You have such great insight into it from different places physically, different places in the county, different roles. Where do you see it going?

JH: Yeah, so I think about this question a lot. I had this idea—and I hope King County can lean into it—which is to be the country’s first equitable cultural system. A cultural system that would deliver cultural opportunities and experiences to people where they are. Think about the library system, right? And how we as a society are endeared to them and rely on them, in particular here in King County, I think. It serves as a really interesting model, because they blur the lines of literacy, basic needs, and community in ways that I think are super exciting. So for instance, in King County, in the county library system, you can find a seed bank. You can find a tool library. You can go to a maker space.

DT: I think King County libraries are in the vanguard of providing social services as well. Having trained social workers as they do in San Francisco actually taking that step and working with people and saying, “You’re at home here, you’re welcome here.” Yeah, it’s an incredible system.

JH: It’s really interesting and I think with 4Culture’s new focus on racial equity, to me, this notion of a cultural system just seems like the natural end—when you take access and equity to its radical ends as applied to the cultural sector. That’s what I think about. Of course, we famously can’t think about tomorrow. It’s almost sci-fi. But in 10 years I would love to see that. There’s also another project that has been in the back of my mind. I’ve never been able to figure out how to do it. I think it’s far deeper and it’s this: I would love to see the end of the starving artist.

DT: Yeah.

JH: You know, before I got into arts and culture, I had a stint in social services and I stepped, very briefly, into the food security world, so: hunger. I directed this coalition of soup kitchens, advocating for their needs, helping them. I take the notion of hunger really seriously, both metaphorically and literally, and why I think this is so pernicious is that it gives people permission to devalue other people, other human beings. I can’t see a world where arts and culture fully step into their power, and fully step into their potential, if at our core, our society continually devalues us.

DT: I agree. When you’ve had that said to you—”But you love your work, you don’t need to be paid for it.”

JH: Yeah. It’s a way of perpetuating oppression, right? And I don’t know how much of that ties to the creative economy, to creative workers being paid. Because the folks who are doing orchestral scores for video games are finding themselves propelled into a different world, because they are artists who are no longer poor. They’re in a creative economy that here, in this place, works in ways it doesn’t in other places.

DT: So I know folks whose kids graduated in music and are now working in that field. It’s a different vision than they had of their lives as symphony musicians, you know what I mean?

JH: I understand what you’re saying because having been in Redmond and Bellevue for eight years, right? The center of the gaming industry in the region, and these conversations about the creative economy. What’s going to bridge us? What’s going to be a bridge for today’s parents to really give support to their creative children? Right now, I know a lot of parents who would say to their child, “Yes, if you want to be an artist, that’s great.” And then bite their nails, right? You know, after they tuck them in at night go, “Oh my god, what are we going to do?”

DT: “Stem, not steam!”

JH: [laughs] Yeah, “Please take math.” If the gaming industry is a way to bridge these parents into seeing arts and culture less as a threat and as a dead end, and more as a potential and as a life choice, great. The next five years, the next 10 years, let’s do it. You know, let’s use that bridge and once we get there, what’s the next bridge? How do we climb ourselves out of this perpetual marginalization? I always say, “If you can’t do it here, then where?”

DT: Ten years ahead, where do you see the communities in King County? Will everybody have been pushed out of Seattle? Will all the cultural communities be in the suburbs?

JH: Well if you look at demographic trends, there’s two things going on. There’s what you’re saying, but what we’re also seeing are new immigrant communities who are establishing themselves in suburban communities. In Bellevue, we knew that something like 85% of the overall population growth was due to foreign-born residents moving there. What I love to remind people is that it’s our suburbs that are actually the center for communities of color. They’re growing. So this idea that the inner city is a location of need, and intervention—

DT: —it’s a, “Yes, and…” for sure.

JH: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you and I are about to head into your last 4Culture board meeting. And my first as Deputy Director! What advice are you going to give your board members and 4Culture leadership as you depart?

DT: It is so hard to bring together a group of people who are selected because they have passion and interest in an area, and then say to them, “Take the big view. Stand above all of that. Stand above your passion, and look at the whole of 4Culture.” I always believed and I continue to believe that the four pieces of 4Culture are remarkable and offer so much opportunity for partnering and for working together, and for community-building. So I think for the board members, that willingness to move past where they are to be in this room of a whole, and look at the entire county is going to be critical. It’s been a great joy for me. So that’s what I hope going forward.

JH: In that framework of seeing the whole, what’s the biggest opportunity that you don’t want us to lose sight of?

DT: I think intentionality in funding. Seizing, in some way, the ability to be intentional and invest. Not to wait for the perfect project or the perfect time but to be able to say, “We’re going to make this intentional mark here. We’re going to try this new program.” I mean, the great thing about 4Culture’s always been, “You want to try something? Try it.” There’s been a general open door policy. Now, maybe you have to do it on a shoe string, but you can try it. The most important new thing for me would be to pick some places and do intentional investments in them.

JH: What’s the unfinished project that sadly you’re leaving behind? Or the project that you always wanted to do?

DT: To really get serious about access for disabled communities in cultural spaces all over, and really support that. I feel like I’ve started that in some ways, you know? We got the hearing loop initiative going. I want to see that move ahead.

What inspired you to start a career in arts and culture?

JH: I think fundamentally I believe culture is the original basic need. And you know, I’m talking culture with a big “C.” Language, identity—

DT: —community.

JH: —community. Society. Meaning without those things, we don’t exist. Just fundamentally. I’m going to put that on the table. And I came into that awareness, right? I was a drama club kid, and I danced hula. I’m from Hawaii. I went to an arts conservatory that was trying to feed us into BFA programs and at the same time, I’m doing hula, which we would label as a folk art. Which they practice in the elementary school that my mother taught at in a portable starting a 7:00 pm, flickering lights. That was just sort of how I grew up.

DT: A kind of bifurcated experience there?

JH: That’s right. So what’s the commonality? Well, we were both marginalized. In theater, we were marginalized for being creative and for having new ideas, just for being out there. And in the hula world, they were marginalized for being who they were, Native Hawaiians and the history of colonialism. I was dealt these two identities that are both marginalized, but all that I see are just completely compelling and legitimate ways to live your life, and earn a living. So what inspired me to get into this is that I can be close to the ideas. I can be close to artists. The things that continually inspire me are when I actually see a proposal—whether it’s a project proposal or just having coffee and hearing, “Hey, I have this idea for a project in my neighborhood and that lights me up.” That’s what keeps me in the game, that’s what it’s about for me.

DT: Yeah, I felt like I had something—when I sat with the artists that I knew, I had something that I could help with. I could read a spreadsheet. I could apply for that grant for them. I could figure out how to get a space and rent it, and get people in the door. That was the passion for being on this end of it, for me. I mean, I have been so privileged here to have people share their dreams with me. That’s what people are doing all day is coming in and saying, “I have this idea. I think we can do this. Maybe it’s crazy.” Being able to be that cheerleader. I’m not the person that’s going to implement the project, they are. But if I can make it easier, if I can be their supporter—not necessarily always with dollars. We have long term relationships. We’re not funding the entire world—we’re here. We’re part of this community. So yeah, I agree with you. That’s the passion for me as well.

What would you say is the biggest challenge for people just coming into this field now?

JH: I think it’s scale. I say scale, because it’s always dogged me. Throughout my career, if I had an idea or the community had an idea or the artists had this idea—we would try it. We would pilot it. We would do a mini version of it. So many of the them never grew, right? It’s a resource issue, partly, but problems today are complex. They are interrelated. They are dynamic in ways that forced me to climb really high altitudes to get perspective, and then have to turn around and dive really deep. You know? Painting eight foot tall golden eggs on the weekend.

DT: Washing the dishes after the event.

JH: Scooping poop. I have scooped poop in a downtown park.

DT: For sure. I think as creative people in a building full of creative people, we’re aware ideas are not unusual here. There’s a million incredible ideas out there. The hard thing is really finding that resonance. Maybe for me, that’s why, again, those four branches of 4Culture are so important. When I see things that bring different pieces and communities together, then it starts to really resonate for me. I think, “That’s got legs.” Some partners might change, but there’s enough strength there in the unity of those things that doesn’t exist in them separately that could allow this to continue. I feel like some of the long term projects where I really feel that 4Culture’s made a difference—I see that it’s those kind of projects.

JH: What I just heard in that is: working through lenses of coalition, of interconnectivity. Going back to the whole starving artists stereotype—I think that is actually related to this idea of individuality. Hyper individuality.

DT: Totally—this myth of always needing isolation in order to flourish, right?

JH: I totally agree with you, and then would even maybe amend the whole scale thing. Scaling your idea up means you’ve got to figure out partnerships and collaboration.

DT: Yeah. It’s long work, and I think some of the great things that have happened here did that. I was thinking about what projects we’ve supported over the years. I was thinking of being at Mukai Gardens for the first Japanese festival last year. I just hadn’t kept up with their progress, I lost track for about six months what was happening and I got there—I couldn’t get anywhere close to park and I was walking on a lane where a barbed wire fence had been. And I realized the gate was open and everything hit me and I just burst into tears. The people in that community brought artists and historians and Parks and Rec people to the table. And it’s there. It’s happening now. There is an incredible satisfaction in just being a tiny piece of that through the years.

JH: You know, one thing I would say, having interfaced with 4Culture from the outside for eight years is that you’re the conveners, you connect people. Right? You lead with the yes and you want to see things happen.

DT: Absolutely. The danger in being the funder is you’re not on the ground anymore. You’ve got to still be boots in the field—to be really close to organizations that are producing projects, to remember what it’s like to not make payroll. So I would say to you, push for that.

JH: Thank you.

DT: Maybe you’ll create your own program!

JH: Uh-oh!

“We have lived a few blocks from the store for the last 15 years and have always wanted to see someone give this obvious piece of history the attention it deserves. ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone fixed that up!’ we would say every time we drove by. We eventually thought that maybe that ‘someone’ could be us.”

What better start to a preservation story?

Built in 1931, Sutherland’s Grocery Store sold staples—milk from owner Victor Sutherland’s cows and penny candy—to travelers on the Military Road thoroughfare, adding a filling station in 1934 and a duplex in 1935. The Sutherland family owned and operated the store until 1953 when it was sold and renamed the Lake Geneva Grocery Store; the business sold again in 1984. Despite being designated a King County Landmark in 2002, the property, which is the last hybrid gas-and-grocery store from the early automotive years left in south King County, sat unattended since 2009.

Enter Marty Dickinson, who purchased the property in 2016 with a vision of turning the deteriorating store into a community events space. Since then, three 4Culture grants—two from Preservation Special Projects and one from Landmarks Capital—have helped fund plans for a septic tank and designs for development of the store and duplex. Marty and his family have hit obstacles in getting their septic plans approved, but haven’t let the unforeseen delays stop them from making amazing progress. They have cleared blackberry overgrowth from the site, replaced deteriorated fences, removed more than 30 tons of debris, and completed a topographical survey of the land parcel. Their work, visible from the road that is still a main thoroughfare, has attracted support from neighbors who remember the store, including Victor Sutherland’s granddaughter. Cheer the Dickinsons on and follow their progress on Facebook!

Throughout the process of managing public art funds for the new Children and Family Justice Center, we’ve focused on supporting youth impacted by the facility and the juvenile justice system. Now, as we get closer to the building’s opening later this year, we’re sharing the ways in which the artists commissioned for work at the CFJC are doing the same.

Murals
Five artists were selected to create murals for the detention areas at the facility: Jesse Brown, Sophia Dawson, Blaine Fontana, Haruka Ostley, and Brian Sanchez. They spent the spring and summer developing their designs—each of their creative processes are unique and involved youth in meaningful ways.

Ostley says, “The youth inspired me greatly, so I made sure to give them my all for this collaborative project. What textures are there to bring warmth into the space? What materials can I share that can be special for them? How can I show that they are valued and cared for?” Ostley drew on the strength and unity symbolized by Japanese koi fish in her mural. Each individual fish was designed by a young person in detention—in the mural, they move forward on a journey together.

Dawson also asked the youth questions to form the basis of her mural, located in the visitation room: “We talked about the concept of a ‘visit’, and if we were to sit across the table from someone that we loved what would we do? Where would we be? We all agreed that the mural design should cause visitors to feel that they were in an entirely different environment.”

For Brown, who spent time in the old juvenile detention center during his own youth, “…this was a project that felt important to be involved with.” He led workshops with youth in detention, combining their original writing through the PONGO Teen Writing program with song lyrics and literature to create text-based mural designs.

Alder Street Entrance
Artist Horatio Law will create artwork for the entrance to the campus’ transitional housing on Alder Street, providing access for social service providers and their clients. Law is a Portland-based installation and public artist who focuses on making creative projects with diverse communities—he frequently engages stakeholders in planning and production of the artwork. His projects explore issues of identity, memory, history, and the meaning of community in a global culture.

Portable Works
91 artworks by 40 artists have been purchased for the CFJC’s juvenile court building. These paintings, sculptures, photographs, and works on paper form a special collection that will be displayed in all public access areas, including lobbies, courtrooms, and social service offices. A panel of court-involved and formerly court-involved youth, artists, arts professionals, community stakeholders, and court staff reviewed the applications submitted for this opportunity and selected works that represent a diversity of perspectives. Many of the artists are from the Northwest, while others live and work elsewhere in the United States.

4Culture believes deeply in juvenile justice reform that results in zero youth detention, and that artists can lead the way in enacting this change. Beyond creating art objects, they are culture-bearers, storytellers, and community-builders. Every single artist involved in this project has demonstrated their commitment to change and to uplifting youth. For more information on how we’ve managed public art funds for the CFJC, click here.

The communities of King County have asked challenging questions and advocated tirelessly for zero youth detention. We welcome all questions, comments, and ideas related to art at the CFJC. If you are interested in working with youth in detention, you are invited to contact Karen Kinch, Volunteer Coordinator.