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Estacada is a small timber town that has found the arts to be a powerful force for community building. We now have a thriving visual arts community, an annual art and music celebration, a remodeled 800-seat auditorium, 13 large scale outdoor murals painted every summer, an arts and culture series, a vibrant downtown core instead of closed storefronts, a grassroots theater group and an awareness at the district level of the importance of arts education. Our beautiful new library was the first public benefit to benefit from our percent for art ordinace passed by the city council. All this has taken place over the last 6 years.

Because we can count on very little corporate support, much of this came about from a combination of wonderful small grants from RACC, OAC, the Oregon Cultural Trust (through the Clackamas Cultural Coalition), and the National Endowment for the Arts combined with a HUGE can-do, all-volunteer group of artists, arts supporters and community leaders, from our mayor to the head of our chamber of commerce. The snowball effect in action.

Our most recent all-community arts experience was a holiday concert in our auditorium of the full Oregon Symphony. All 850 seats were sold out. We also received last year the Oregon Symphony Community Music Partnership, supported by public and foundation funding acquired by the Symphony, which had symphony musicians in residence at all our schools, included small ensemble community concerts and culminated in another full orchestra performance last spring.

These successes have been a result of contagious enthusiasm, awareness of resources, patience, collaboration, tenacity and the willingness to start small but think big.

posted 5 years, 4 months ago
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