Jack Straw Foundation

Programs: Jack straw cultural center impacts the arts and cultural communities of seattle in diverse and significant ways. In fy 2017, thousands of people listened to our radio productions and podcasts, visited our new media gallery, attended our events, and participated in our programs. Not only did we provide a unique laboratory and venue for artists working creatively with sound, but we also provided important services for numerous arts and heritage organizations in seattle and puget sound. We offered arts and technology programs for elementary, middle, and high school students in schools, in various community locations, and at jack straw cultural center with a special focus on youth with disabilities and with students with limited english proficiency. We worked with arts and visually impaired audiences to provide access services for the visually impaired for performing and visual arts events, to provide the 21st year of our programs for blind and visually impaired students, and to provide a series of art workshops in our new media gallery for visually impaired students and sighted friends and family. We served over 5,000 individuals through direct services in our facility and over 50,000 individuals through radio broadcasts and podcasts of our artist and youth productions. Building: we completed phase one of replacing our whole building's hvac systems and did planning for phase 2, which we will complete by the end of calendar 2017. Selected highlights:artist residencies: we successfully completed the twenty-fourth year of the jack straw artist support program, twenty-first year of the jack straw writers program, and the eighteenth year of the jack straw new media gallery and gallery residency program. Ninety-five artists created 32 new artworks, participated in 86 events in 12 community locations, 5 exhibits, 1 anthology, and 28 radio programs or podcasts reaching over 20,000 audience members. Education programs: we served over 2,200 elementary, middle school, and high school students in creative and curriculum-based projects and performances including creative writing, oral history, radio theater, music recording, and audio production. Many of our arts education programs reached broader audiences, such as our making a difference psas, a radio series produced with john muir elementary school fourth graders to help students create radio theater stories while learning about different important social issues. We began working with new school partners, such as middle college high school and bailey gatzert elementary, and started new projects with past school partners, such as sanislo elementary and hamilton middle school. We continued our ongoing programs such as our poetry writing, performance, and recording with new refugees at the seattle world school and with eight grade spanish immersion students at denny international middle school and our poetry and song projects with concord and lowell elementary schools. We completed the 21st year of our blind youth audio program, serving 65 blind and visually impaired elementary, middle, and high school students from throughout washington state, in partnership with arts and visually impaired audiences (avia), the department of services for the blind, and the wa state school for the blind. We partnered with mopop (formerly emp) to present a special science fiction writing and recording project and an audio myths project for 6th graders at broadview thomson, as well as recording sessions for student music ensembles through their star program. We also provided professional training for artists, teachers, and other community members. Community partnerships and program services: we continued to expand our partnership with early music seattle (formerly the early music guild), who now have their offices in our building, providing them with rehearsal space for visiting musicians and developing and implementing joint youth education programs. We presented a collaborative showcase concert in collaboration with festal and northwest folklife celebrating 20 years of festals cultural festivals. We provided recording and transcription support to the seattle public library for two oral history projects, in addition to our annual library readings by jack straw writers with the seattle public library center for the book. We also continued our co-production of workshops and events with literary organizations raven chronicles and floating bridge press, the production and broadcast of green acre environmental radio program, and weekly production of sonarchy radio featuring regional musicians for kexp. We also provided a variety of arts, heritage, and education organizations with production support.