Jack Straw Foundation

Arts: we successfully completed the twenty-ninth year of the Jack Straw artist support program, twenty-sixth year of the Jack Straw writers program, and the twenty-third year of the Jack Straw new media gallery and gallery residency program. We collaborated with lelavision and nw folklife to present our resident artists in festivals at westcrest park and seattle center. Over one hundred artists created 27 new artworks, participated in 30 in person and streaming events, 5 exhibits, 1 anthology, and 35 radio programs or podcasts reaching over 10,000 audience members. We continue to develop new relationships and maintain longtime partnerships to keep our programming vital. We presented events with hugo house and nepantla cultural arts gallery; produced podcasts with partners such as seattle cultural accessibility consortium and seattle arts and lectures; and environmental radio programs with reporter martha baskin. We also provided a variety of arts, heritage, and education organizations with production support.

Studio services: our studio services, which we provide for a wide range of individuals and organizations, include music and spoken recording and production, remote recording, audition audio and video recording, podcast/radio production, audio book production, media digitization and preservation, audio mastering, sound design for film and performance, interpretive material production, oral history production, student and professional music recitals and performances, and radio theater. Music projects ranged from audition recordings for music students and professionals to album recordings for individuals and groups of all genres. We recorded and produced podcasts, radio theater, audio books, and other audio media for a variety of individuals and organizations, such as entre rios books, jim french productions, the seagull project, university of Washington, macmillan publishers, the poet salon podcast, vida marketing, lens media group, ek real estate group, and stryker emergency medicine.

Education: we served over 900 elementary, middle school, and high school students in creative and curriculum-based projects including creative writing, oral history, radio theater, family celebration stories, music, and audio production. We continued to expand and adapt our programs for online and hybrid settings in collaboration with our partners seattle school district, kandelia, hugo house, wa department of services for the blind, arts & visually impaired audiences, and the wa state school for the blind. We completed the 26th year of our blind youth audio program, serving 9 blind and visually impaired high school students virtually from throughout Washington state, and worked with two visually impaired youth interns to create a promotional video for the Washington state department of services for their youth programs, while providing vocational training in audio and video production. We presented two accessible art-making workshops on zoom for blind and visually impaired students, families, and sighted friends with our new media gallery artists. We continued our ongoing programs such as our guitar lessons and hip-hop class with new refugees at the seattle world school, our poetry and song project with concord. Lowell, and genesee elementary schools, spanish-language poetry with eighth grade dual-language students at denny international middle school and mercer middle school, music recording with roosevelt high school jazz and choir, and family celebration stories with new school daniel bagley elementary school. We also provided professional training for artists, teachers, and other community members.