You'll Like Tacoma

I have spent roughly the last four years of my life in Downtown Tacoma. Previous to that, I had only driven by Tacoma on my way to other places and was told that Tacoma is not where I wanted to be. As I have come to find, those sentiments were completely false. Tacoma is exactly where I want to spend the rest of my life. I don’t know about all the other Tacoma transplants but I fell in love immediately and claimed Tacoma as my home. 

As someone who grew up in an unincorporated town, I never really had a city to call my own. Without ever moving, my address changed four times due to re-configuring of city lines - I was in no man’s land.  On top of that, the developing suburbs popping up don’t offer the community that I have come to find in Tacoma. There is not an art community.  There are no museums.  There is no night life or wonderful Barre classes to enjoy on Sunday mornings. Coffee is limited to Starbucks and there is seriously only one grocery store. Rather than limited choices and opportunities, Tacoma is full of life and vibrancy.  

You can feel it in the air that Tacoma is the place to be, this is the time that you want to invest and put roots down in the City of Destiny. Tacoma is about to launch into another golden era. 

As our art community grows, as our population diversifies, and as the housing market explodes, Tacoma is sure to become one of the best cities in the country to live in. Whether you are out on your own, happily married, in the middle of growing your family, or entering retirement, our city has so much to offer. We are reaching new medical hub heights, our transportation system is set to expand greatly, and graduation rates are rising. 

While all of this may sound lofty and like a daydream because of the glacial pace that the city is moving, I believe Tacoma will be the next big thing because they are trying to be very intentional on how Tacoma grows. Tacoma cannot just grow for growth sake, it needs to be well thought out and managed otherwise we will be running into problems of the past. Tacoma is ready to launch and I am so honored that I get to be a part of it. 

Dia De Los Muertos: TAM's 11th Annual Day of the Dead Festival

The Tacoma Art Museum will be hosting their 11th Dia De Los Muertos festival this November 1st 10:00am-4:00pm. This year they will be hosting a Calavera Costume Contest where you can enter to win a $100 prize. There will be free face painting, sugar skull making, and you can create chalk memorials under the TAM's grand awning.

Artist Rene Julio will be featured along with community and partner made altars throughout the museum. Traditional foods will be served in the TAM cafe along with mariachi music to dance to.  

While the event does run from 10:00am-4:00pm, special times and events have been scheduled throughout the day. From 11:00-12:00pm there will be a mariachi performance by Mariachi Lucero, at 2:00pm Danza Quetzacoatl de Olympia will be performing. 3:00pm the winner of the Calavera costume contest will be announced and throughout the entire day PBS will be screening their series: Latino Americans. 

This event is free and open to the public. There are more activities yet to be announced so be sure to check out their Facebook and website links below.

 I hope to see you all there! 

Find out more on the TAM's Facebook Page or the the TAM website

Get inspired here for Calavera cosutme ideas! 

Film School Shorts is a production of KQED.

Written and directed by Ashley Graham, Kate Reynolds and Lindsey St. Pierre. The film won Gold Medal at the 2013 Student Academy Award for Best Animated Short.

Music by Corey Wallace 

Sound Department Mauricio d'Orey 

Spaceworks Tacoma - Activating Space

Activated space.

It’s one of the most important elements of community development and neighborhood revitalization. It’s importance is understood by both high level urban planners and grass roots community organizers. It speaks both to architectural design and the importance of third spaces for people to gather, and it speaks to everything in between.

In Tacoma we have an inventive and robust effort that understands the importance of activated space - it’s called Spaceworks Tacoma.

Spaceworks is a partnership between the City of Tacoma and the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce that is designed to activate empty storefronts and vacant spaces in the city with art and creative enterprise.

Property owners donate their vacant spaces and Spaceworks makes those low-cost temporary spaces available to artists, entrepreneurs, organizations, and community groups who transform those spaces with creative business, art installations, short term community based projects, or pop-up events.

Spaceworks also provides training, professional development and technical assistance to the participants in the program. 

Have you seen a Spaceworks installation around town? Have you visited a Spaceworks business? Have you attended one of a plethora of creative events and parties held in a Spaceworks activated spaces?

If not, what are you waiting for? They are all around you - in the downtown neighborhood, the Hilltop, the 6th Avenue corridor, and throughout the city.

On June 3rd from noon - 1pm, Spaceworks Tacoma will be highlighted in the Walk Tacoma series for 2015. Spaceworks is hosting a free, guided Public Art Walk that will be lead by Public Art Specialist Rebecca Solverson with the City of Tacoma.

This particular art walk will be 1.5 miles and will explore the local public art and murals found throughout the Hilltop neighborhood. The walk will start at People’s Park on S. 9th and MLK Jr. Way.

One of the more whacky and fun projects that Spaceworks will be involved with is in partnership with the Cartoonist League of Absurd Washingtonians (CLAW) and Downtown on the Go (DOTG).

CLAW has their Open Swim event tonight, May 27th, 7:30 pm at King’s Books. DOTG is sponsoring this open swim event by providing ten blank white bike helmets to be drawn on and decorated by attendees.

The plan is to have the decorated helmets serve as a traveling exhibit for DOTG to be orchestrated by Spaceworks. Rumor has it these helmets might end up on the heads of some well known Tacoma personalities during the Downtown to Defiance event in September. Finally, the helmets will be auctioned off and the proceeds split between DOTG and the CLAW Student Scholarship Fund.

Now that is some creative partnership if you ask me.

The thing about activated space - it is both a function of the space itself and the people that populate it. Spaceworks is doing it’s part. Let’s do ours and populate these spaces with our presence and our dollars.

Creative Colloquy - Kicking the Gate Open

In a world full of gate keepers - Jackie Fender, Joshua Swainston, and William Turbyfill have dispatched the guard and kicked the gate wide open.

Together they are the team behind Creative Colloquy (CC), an online literary site that hosts a monthly reading in Tacoma’s Opera Ally at the B Sharp Coffee House (every last Monday of the month at 7 pm). In addition to the site and the readings, CC has an annual print literary review and a regular podcast that William hosts called LiterallyTacoma. CC primarily focuses on short fiction and novel excerpts, but they also include poetry and other prose.

CC was founded in February of 2014 and their mission is to foster relationships built upon the mutual admiration of the written word and provide a platform to highlight literary talent in the South Sound.

This coming Monday May 25th, I will have the pleasure of emceeing this months reading, along with my fellow co-founder and co-producer of the Drunken Telegraph (DT), Megan Sukys.

I don’t know the team at CC all that well.

I have attended a few of the readings, peruse the site regularly to read what local writers are putting out, and of course I bought a copy of this last years literary review, Creative Colloquy - Volume One. Jackie and I have crossed paths in other storytelling and literary circles.

We were grateful when Jackie invited the Drunken Telegraph to host the upcoming show and cross promote our final  Drunken Telegraph show of the season at Studio 3 of the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts on June 13 at 7:30 pm.

However, beyond my gratitude lies my admiration for CC and it’s team. Certainly, we share some things in common - not the least of which is a love for a story well told, albeit our focus is grounded in the oral tradition and their’s in the written word.

However, my admiration doesn’t end with CC’s fine work of highlighting and promoting storytellers and writers, and in fact is highest as it relates to their commitment to build community.

You see it in that one line of their mission statement - to foster relationships built upon a mutual admiration of the written word.

CC & DT have that in common - it’s not just about the stories and the writing - it’s about community and building relationships.

Going back to my opening point, I grow weary of the self appointed or privilege appointed gate keepers of the arts here in Tacoma and elsewhere. They never really grow the arts, they just recycle through the same old manifestations, which rarely serves more then their out of touch donors and their own egos.

This is why CC is so refreshing.

If you read their publications or come to a reading you will find the words of established and talented local writers - as you should. You will also read and hear the words of emerging writers, of writers who are sharing their work for the first time in a public forum, and yes, sometimes you might hear or read something that you think is really bad.

Perhaps that bad writing will never be any good. Then again, with practice, and with the forum they are provided through CC, perhaps it will get better, and even become great.

Right now I am reading the book The Republic of the Imagination: America in Three Books by the author Azar Nafisi, best known for her book Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Both of Nafisi’s books are about the power, the necessity, and the subversiveness of literature (and story) to transform peoples lives and to re-imagine and shape the identify of a generation and even a whole culture.

This is why I think the two most important words in CC’s mission statement are mutual admiration.

Too often the gate keeper approach to things only allows the ones deemed the most talented to get up close. This isn’t just true in the arts.

I think anyone that has lived in Tacoma for a while can attest that part of our problem as a city has been the role of gate keepers who hoard to much of the power within a chosen few and thus stifle the creative imagination of the masses.

Certainly this isn’t the only issue, but you’d be hard pressed to convince me that it hasn’t been part of the problem.

Not every arts based organization can be or needs to be as egalitarian as CC. But, every community needs a few groups like it to create a place not just for the super talented (whatever that means), but for everyone trying to tell a story.

Luckily CC isn’t the only group that refuses to play a gate keeper role in Tacoma. We have a lot of community based and in touch artists who are focused on building community and developing artists, wherever they are at in their development.

It is true that the tellers of stories and writers are transformed by the process and practice of sharing their words and stories. Still, the greatest service of stories and literature is to the masses. It is to the admirers. The readers and the hearers - whose imaginations, actions, and trajectory are forever changed by their encounter.

So, I say thank you to Jackie, Joshua, and William. Thank you for not only highlighting and cultivating the literary talent and culture of our city, but thank you for building community and opening your gates to every budding writer and storyteller that risks sharing their words and story with us.

I invite all of you to come out and join us this Monday night, right here in the Theater District of downtown Tacoma

Bring your own stories or just bring your imagination. Bring with you a belief that part of how we build the strong community we all want, is to build on our already vibrant arts community, and most importantly take the time to listen to one another’s stories - perhaps even risking to tell our own.

Council Consideration Request: Theatre District Branding

The Tacoma City Council is continuing a conversation for a formal designation of the Downtown Theater District. The City started their conversation during the Committee of the Whole on January 6th. Council member Thoms brought up this request to the Council to designate a formal point of center for the Theater District on 9th and Broadway.

The promotion and marketing of the district is aligned with City of Tacoma's North Downtown Subarea Plan that was adopted this past year. This plan highlighted the Theater District as an area that is identified as a key public gathering place and hub of cultural and civic events.

Although Council member Thoms initially proposed a district with boundaries shown in the map below, the City decided that a central designation would be a more flexible plan, and at the same time adding the prestige and sense of identity. During the committee  meeting Thoms stated, "(legitimizing an official name) is more of a mechanism than a formal district, not as a way to apply for grants, but for signage and formal designation purposes. It is something we have been calling it for a long time, but we do this now in the hopes that it would have some economic benefits to use as a tool in the future."

This request would allow the City to brand and promote the Theater District identity. The BIA welcomes this official designation and believes that it will enhance the legitimacy of what Downtown Tacoma has to offer.

Previous Proposed Theater District Boundaries
City of Tacoma

First Night Tacoma 2012: The Year of the Snake

In case you missed it, today is New Year's Eve.  That means First Night is back.

Every New Year’s Eve, Tacoma hosts its own celebration. With the year of the snake coming upon us, this gathering of every age, color and stripe brings music & dance, fire & ice, laughter & wonder all together culminating in a midnight embrace of all that is good and right in the world. This celebration brings together about 10,000 people from Tacoma and beyond for a full day of festivities. 

The first events are already underway now with access to the Children's Museum and the Glass Museum.  If the 6:30PM parade at Broadway & 9th will keep you out to late, the Children's Museum is hosting a parade through its space at noon today.

For the full schedule of events, please visit: http://www.firstnighttacoma.org/

For a great summary of events, you can also check out the TNT article here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/12/28/2416300/first-night-festivities-the-partys.html

Celebrate & Support at the Spaceworks Cakewalk

Spaceworks has had an amazing year - landing permanent leases for several vacant spaces and helping numerous artists explore their future - much of it highlighted in last week's paper.  Now it's time to celebrate these successes and raise some money for 2013.

On September 15th, from 6-9PM, Spaceworks will be throwing a free party at 311 S. 7th St. 98402. In grade school tradition, there will be a cakewalk with an opportunity to win fabulous cakes and art.  Tickets for the walks will cost from $5-20 - this is a fundraiser after all.  To entice you further they'll have a DJ, refreshments, and a performance from the BareFoot Collective.

If you like goodies from Dulce Cupcakes, Angel Cakes, Hello Cupcake, Corina Bakery, Celebrity Cake, or Amocat, you should definitely join us.  

If you like art from people like Jeremy Gregory, Chandler O'Leary, Jessica Spring, Oliver Doriss, Lance Kagey, Kyle Dillehay, Janet Marcavage,  Lisa Kinoshita, Diane Hansen, Brian Hutcheson, Amy McBride, Sean Alexander, Kenji Stoll, Maria Meneses, Nate Dybevik, Goldfinch, The Warehouse, the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts, and others this will be your chance to get ahold of some works.

If you support creative entrepreneurs  in Tacoma, filling vacant storefronts, and making downtown more vibrant then you want to support Spaceworks now and in the coming years.  For more on Spaceworks and how you can support it, visit the Spaceworks blog.  For more on the Spaceworks Cakewalk, visit the Cakewalk page.

Spaceworks Creating Businesses and Filling Vacancies

In the past, Spaceworks has done a great job of highlighting local artists doing work in and around Tacoma. While continuing to support artists, the Spaceworks program has shifted to include more creative entrepreneurs who are turning their work into businesses.

This shift has not gone unnoticed as Kathleen Cooper of The News Tribune noted on the cover of Sunday's paper: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/08/19/2260852/spaceworks-fills-voids-for-art.html.  

"What began as a program to use vacant downtown storefronts as showcases for Tacoma’s vibrant artists has started to focus on business incubation, and it’s working. 

In the past few months, three groups that found free space in commercial buildings through Spaceworks Tacoma have made the leap into the marketplace. A youth-focused creative arts organization, working in the city for a decade, has its first permanent headquarters. A man who rehabilitates and sells antique pianos has his own shingle. And four women who create unique home décor will open their retail store next month in the heart of Tacoma’s Antique Row."

As the Chamber continues to support innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the County, we look forward to strengthening Spaceworks role in helping small businesses get off the ground.

Museums Closed this Third Thursday

The Third Thursday of the month is typically when our downtown museums offer free admission to all comers.  Unfortunately, the weather has closed all of the museums for this month's walk.  Often there are numerous galleries also involved in the event.  If you are still planning on attending one, I would highly recommend calling ahead of time to see if they are still open.  The Artwalk website can be found here for future months: http://www.artwalktacoma.com/

Tacoma Art Museum: http://www.tacomaartmuseum.org/
Washington State History Museum: http://www.washingtonhistory.org/visitus/default.aspx
Museum of Glass: http://www.museumofglass.org/
Children's Museum: http://www.playtacoma.org/

Third Thursday Art at Work

As November zips by we are already at this month's Third Thursday Artwalk.  However, with this being Art at Work Month there are a few more things on the calendar for this evening.  In addition to all the great venues available by foot or the Art Bus, there are a couple of items off the beaten path that jumped out:

• Final lecture/discussion of the Conversations RE: Tacoma series is titled "Uncovering Tacoma's Authenticity: What's the Draw?"  Sponsored by the AIA, it promises to discuss how we can create a vision for Tacoma's future and sustain it.  For more info, please visit the Conversations website. ($10, 6PM, Museum of Glass)
• Madera Architectural Studio is hosting their annual small works show.  While the MAE collection of local artisians is typically focused on building components and home furnishings, this show highlights scaled down works that are a bit more portable - and affordable.  For more info, please visit MAE's website. (Free, 5-8PM, 2210 Court A)

For a full list of events today, and the rest of the month, head over to the Art at Work website.

Prairie Line Trail Public Art Tour

This Saturday, November 12th, at 2PM the Tacoma Arts Commission will be leading a 90-minute tour of the Prairie Line Trail.  This will be a great opportunity to learn about the significance and future of the Trail while enjoying a series of public art interventions.

Before the Prairie Line Trail followed Hood Street as it does today, it was the western terminus for the Northern Pacific Railroad's transcontinental line (beating out other notable northwest cities).  Today the City is discussing how to best retain this piece of history while integrating it with modern uses (previously discussed here).  In addition, the City is looking at ways to build a non-motorized trail connecting the Water Ditch Trail through south downtown to and onto the Thea Foss Waterway.

(more below)

Celebrate Downtown at the 10/21 City Center Luncheon

UPDATED 10/17/11

Ice skating, fire breathing dragons, public art installations, and kids.  Where can you find them all in one place?  At this quarter's City Center Luncheon on 10/21.  You can register here.

A quarterly event highlight what's happening in and around downtown Tacoma, each quarter the luncheon features topics important to the people who live, work and play downtown.  This quarter is focused on all the exciting events in downtown as we head into fall and winter.  The current program includes the following:

First Night 2012: Year of the Dragon
Every New Year’s Eve Tacoma hosts its own New Year’s Eve celebration.  With the year of the dragon coming upon us, this gathering of every age, color and stripe brings music & dance, fire & ice, laughter & wonder all together culminating in a midnight embrace of all that is good and right in the world.  This celebration brings together about 10,000 people from Tacoma and beyond for a full day of festivities.  Learn more about this year’s plans from Co-Director Lance Kagey.

Polar Plaza: Ice Skating Rink in Tollefson Plaza
Ice skating in public parks is often reserved for northeastern cities and our northwest imaginations – until this year.  The Tacoma Art Museum and Franciscan Health System are bringing an ice rink to Tollefson Plaza just in time for the holidays.  Cameron Fellows of the Tacoma Art Museum will share more information about how you can make your triple lutz dreams a reality.

Art is Everywhere: Art @ Work Month & Prairie Line Trail Installation
This November is Tacoma Arts Month.  This 10th anniversary edition will illustrate the city's collective talent and get people involved in the arts.  This will be an opportunity to become an active part of Tacoma's cultural life.  In addition, the Prairie Line Trail will be seeing a special installation connecting its past to the present.  The City of Tacoma's Amy McBride will be sharing more on the hundreds of activities occuring next month.

Kids in Your Business: SOTA, SAMI & Downtown Businesses
You've seen teenagers wandering the streets of downtown.  Many of them are associated with some of our downtown schools.  Now the Tacoma School of the Arts as well as the Science and Math Institute are offering businesses the opportunitiy to show selected students the other side of their business through a brief 12-day internship.  Career Counselor Michaele Sein-Ryan will talk more about this rewarding opportunity for businesses and the community.

When: Friday, October 21, 2011
Time: 11:30 (registration) 12:00-1:15 (program)
Location: Courtyard by Marriott, 1515 Commerce Street, 98402
Sponsor: Rainier Connect

To register for the luncheon visit the Chamber's website, call or email Janice Hutchins (253) 627-2175, janiceh@tacomachamber.org

Prices: $25 Members pre-paid by October 18th

           $30 Members at the door

           $35 Non-members/Walk-Ins