With great enthusiasm, we share 4Culture’s new mission, vision, and values with you! Read them on our website.

To arrive at this point, our staff, Board of Directors, Advisory Committee members, and community stakeholders spent six months critically examining our organization’s ecosystem: who we are, what we do, and how we can support the myriad individuals and institutions that make our region so vibrant.

It was essential that our mission, vision, and values articulate the core beliefs that underpin our responsibilities toward King County’s cultural community. These new institutional guideposts recognize the complex web of systems that have historically privileged particular communities over others. This understanding of privilege demands a reckoning with the forces of oppression—racism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, ageism, regionalism, classism, and more.

Our mission statement deliberately focuses on racial equity to affirm this understanding. More importantly, it provides 4Culture with the tools necessary to dismantle all oppressions. It prompts us to continually review and refine our internal policies, operations, and efforts toward the removal of entrenched barriers to inclusion. To date, this work has included the creation of an internal Racial Equity Team, a year-long training program for staff, Board, and Advisory Committees focused on racial equity, and the creation of programs like Community 4Culture, the Arc Artist Fellowship, Artists Up, and Creative Justice. Now, it also includes this new mission, vision, and values statement.

You will notice that in both our mission and vision, we use the term “culture.” This was a purposeful decision, not to deprioritize our four program areas—Public Art, Preservation, Heritage and Arts—but rather to embrace the intersections between them. The brilliance and creativity of the cultural sector means that it is fluid, constantly unfolding, and frequently realigns based on need and circumstance. We believe our new mission, vision, and values strongly position 4Culture to continue supporting the existing cultural environment, while simultaneously working to effect change—both internally and externally.

Our deepest thanks to all who helped shape these statements—our Board, Advisory Committees, staff, and consultants.

Sincerely,
Brian J. Carter, Executive Director
Heather Trescases, Board President