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 Photo courtesy of Portland Center Stage
Arts & Culture is pleased to share that among the 2024 Portland Insights Survey’s robust findings, locals expressed the highest degree of satisfaction with the City’s outdoor and natural areas, amenities, and arts and culture offerings. Specifically, more than 66% of Portlanders say they’re pleased with the City of Portland’s arts and culture events, activations, performances, and more—with 25.9% of respondents being extremely satisfied.
“The arts can assist with our community’s most pressing issues. Those benefits to our city and our region, while more difficult to measure [than economic impacts], are just as important," says Arts & Culture Director Chariti Montez. "The Insights Survey’s findings do start to get to some of those benefits as experienced by our neighbors—fellow Portlanders.”
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Office of Arts & Culture presents on grantmaking, arts education, and more for City’s Arts and Economy Committee
 On April 22, 2025, Arts & Culture Director Chariti Montez presented to the City of Portland’s Arts and Economy Committee—co-chaired by Councilmembers Mitch Green (District 4) and Dan Ryan (District 2).
During the 20-minute presentation, Montez walked the five-person committee and members of the public through a mix of information about the value of the arts for art’s sake, the economic impact of the arts, and the current state of Arts & Culture’s core bodies of work—arts education, cultural planning, grantmaking, performing arts venues, and public art.
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🖌️ Celebrating the Arts Access Fund and Portlanders’ commitment to providing all K-5 students with an arts education
 Photo by Diego Diaz
In recent months, the Office of Arts & Culture and its collaborating partners have hosted gatherings, installations, performances, and more, all with the goal of highlighting how unique and impactful the Arts Access Fund is. These celebrations, from our student art installation at the Portland Building to the student art exhibit at Literary Arts and the HeART of Portland, lifted up Portlanders’ commitment to providing every local K-5 student with access to an arts education.
In this article, we’re taking a look back this year’s key news and developments related to the impact of the Arts Access Fund.
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 Photo courtesy of Community Music Center
Portland Parks & Recreation’s Community Music Center (CMC) will celebrate 70 years of music education on May 3, 2025—and you’re invited to join in. Festivities kickoff at 2 p.m. and are slated to include a reception, memorabilia display, and a benefit concert featuring faculty and staff performing artists. Additionally, the City will honor seven CMC instructors who have more than 25 years of teaching experience each!
Founded in 1955, the center welcomes hundreds of Portlanders for weekly music lessons and classes, presents dozens of free and drop-in concerts annually, hosts a range of community groups, and more.
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 Courtesy of Portland Bureau of Transportation
Do you want to throw a performance, dance party, craft market, seed swap, game night, neighborhood meet and greet, or something else? Plazas are for Portlanders and the PBOT team loves to see them thrive! (So does the Arts & Culture team!)
The Small Plaza Activation Process is intended to remove barriers for small-scale (less than 100 people) neighborhood-based activities that build social and community connections in PBOT plazas. Best of all, permits under Small Plaza Activation are 100% FREE. If you're looking to throw a larger event, apply for a Community Event with Portland in the Streets!
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Public art spotlight: Tla heniiya wens gahl hitchin’kin a’mah henwiis k’ihlan eik’ tah lah (A Lot of Sticks and Money From a Long Time Ago) and Fish Sticks
 A collaboration between artists Shirod Younker (Coquille, Coos, Umpqua, Bastonii, Filipino) and Toma Villa (Yakama Nation), this 2022 sculpture uses different media—wood dowels on panel and a painted mural—to create a cohesive artwork.
Of the piece Younker writes, “The concept of the work was about collaboration with other artists I consider friends with a similar history, but different. To create work that spoke to all our truths regarding our Indigenous heritage. We had different visions of what could be done and what is important… and by overlaying these concepts it gives a more accurate idea of what it’s like to be a Native American today.”
“There is always a struggle or tension on the threads that connect us: spirituality, kinship, natural resources, and history. Our ability to weave these together informs and gives strength and purpose to our art,” Younker says.
This artwork is part of the City's 1,700-piece public art collection and is free for the public to see firsthand, along with many other works, at the Portland Building.
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Add it to your calendar 🗓️
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May 8-17
Portland-based dance company BodyVox presents Death and Delight: An evening of Shakespeare, both tragic and comedic.
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May 11-June 22
In a tour-de-force one-person farce that The Guardian describes as “mind and character bending,” Asian American actor and comedian Chris Grace explores the bounds of an artist’s identity.
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May 16-31
If there's anyone who understands where hysteria and hysterical meet, it's Imago Theatre's absurdisuteur Carol Triffle. That crazy common ground of hilarity and despair has never been as strikingly apparent as it is in her newest work.
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May 17-June 1
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Vanport Mosaic Festival presents two weeks of memory activism programming to amplify Oregon’s silenced histories through performances, documentary screenings, exhibits, tours, and more.
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Grant opportunities and open calls
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Professional Development Grant Program from RACC | Up to $2,000 | Application deadline: April 30, 2025
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Community Vitality and Economic Opportunity Grant Pilot Program from Multnomah County | $5,000-$50,000 | Application deadline: May 1, 2025
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Arts Learning Grants from Oregon Arts Commission | $10,000 | Application deadline: May 14, 2025
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SHIFT: Transformative Change and Indigenous Art from Native Arts + Cultures Foundation | $100,000 | Application deadline: May 15, 2025
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PDX Terminal Redevelopment Public Art Request for Qualifications Mural Design from RACC | Up to $5,000 | Application deadline: May 21, 2025
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Community Grants from Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) | Application deadline: May 27, 2025
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Community Livability Grant from Prosper Portland | $10,000-$50,000 | Application deadline: May 30, 2025
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Portland Book Festival Book Submissions from Literary Arts | Submission deadline: June 13, 2025
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Traducción e Interpretación | Biên Dịch và Thông Dịch | अनुवादन तथा व्याख्या
口笔译服务 | Устный и письменный перевод | Turjumaad iyo Fasiraad
Письмовий і усний переклад | Traducere și interpretariat | Chiaku me
Awewen Kapas
Translation and Interpretation: 311
The City of Portland ensures meaningful access and reasonably provides: translation, interpretation, modifications, accommodations, alternative formats, auxiliary aids and services. To request these services, call 311 for Relay Service or TTY: 711.
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