Documentation of Arts3C Grant funded Once in A Lifetime: Dead People’s Sheets (Risk/Reward Festival, 2024). Photo by Eric Griswold, courtesy of Grantee Lyndsay Hogland. 

This fall, we are excited to launch a new funding initiative to support innovative artistic projects in the City of Portland. Portland Arts Project Grants will launch in the final week of August, inviting applications from Portland-based artists and organizations seeking to advance their work through programming, presentations, events or artistic development that engages and benefits the public. 

Applications will be due by Wednesday, October 23, 2024 and awards will be made after February 21, 2025. Please mark your calendars! This grant will be a single round and there will not be another opportunity to apply in Spring 2025. We look forward to supporting you, our vibrant creative community, through this program. Learn more here. 

We are currently accepting applications from individuals interested in serving as a Community Panel Reviewer for the Portland Arts Project Grants. Reviewers will perform and complete their work between November and December 2024; serving on 1-3 virtual grant panels. Reviewers should be practicing artists and/or have experience facilitating or curating arts programming or managing an arts-based business, and community members who have not recently or have never served on a RACC panel are strongly encouraged to apply.

Reviewers receive a stipend of $250-$325 per panel on which they serve. The exact rate per panel will be determined at the conclusion of the grant application period and is based on the number of proposals in each panel group. Most panel stipends will be $275. Please note: Community Panel Reviewers are not eligible to apply for their own Portland Arts Project Grant while participating as a reviewer; however, past recipients of RACC grants, up to and including the most recent cycle of Arts3C Grants, are eligible to participate. Applications submitted by October 1, 2024 will be given priority. Apply here.

The Regional Arts and Culture Council is proud to steward creative empowerment in our region through our decades of experience providing specialized artists services and funding to artists and arts organizations. 

Grantee Unlock the Arts uses expressive writing as a catalyst for personal transformation and empowerment at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility for young teens and adults. Their programming is built around personal growth and insight, aiming for participants to utilize the healing power of writing beyond incarceration. 

They write, “We extend our gratitude to RACC for supporting and believing in a program centered on amplifying justice-impacted and marginalized voices.”

Keep up with Unlock the Arts here!

Photo courtesy of Constellation Reading Series.

Another Grantee, Constellation Reading Series, is a new on-going, once-monthly reading series, centering and uplifting the creative writing of BIPOC and other marginalized writers. Each event celebrates three diverse readers sharing various forms of writing. 

Their reading series is about inclusion, platforming historically marginalized readers, community-building, and place-making. During their grant, 91% of authors were non-white, 20% were queer and/or trans, and 25% were born outside of the United States. 

Stay updated with the Constellation Reading Series here. 

Now more than ever, RACC needs your financial support as we continue our work to guarantee access to resources and opportunities, and strengthen community through the care we provide as an advocate, a thought partner, and connector.  Make your gift today and join us in harnessing the power of access, community, and care to create a brighter, more vibrant world through the arts!