Siri Grubb (she/her), Senior Director of Executive Operations, Oregon Symphony: Siri joined the Oregon Symphony in 2021 as executive assistant to the CEO and music director and liaison to the Board of Directors. In that role, she developed a broad understanding of the symphony’s business and the key concerns facing arts groups in Oregon. Over five years, she has expanded the scope of her position to provide increased high-level strategic support. As senior director of executive operations, she represents the office of the CEO, shepherds institutional initiatives, and helps to drive success across the organization. Siri earned a master’s in communication at PSU, where she focused on political and strategic communication. Why she wanted to join the CACO board: “I believe that art and culture are as important for quality of life as economic opportunity, and I’m honored to join the CACO board. I’m grateful for this opportunity to support the health and vitality of the sector so that Oregon remains a place where everyone can thrive.”

Beth Lewis (she/her), Director of Development, Portland Opera: Beth joined the opera in June 2025 and oversees fundraising, including annual giving, major gifts, corporate sponsorships, grants, and special events. As a lifelong actor, Beth has extensive experience in classical theater, improv, and music across NYC, LA, and regional theaters. Before joining Portland Opera, she directed development and donor engagement at Centro Cultural de Washington County, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, and Portland Center Stage at The Armory. She was also managing director for Bag&Baggage Productions and Curious Comedy Theater. She has a B.A. in theatre from Connecticut College and a Certificate in Acting from Michael Howard Studios. She is also board president of the Aloha Community Library and the Arts & Communication Magnet Academy parent-teacher organization in Beaverton. Why she wanted to join the CACO board: “I’m excited to join the board of the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon to help champion policies that sustain a vibrant arts ecosystem across the state and ensure organizations like Portland Opera can continue serving our communities.”

Brian Robrecht, Box Office and Front of House Manager, Newport Performing Arts: Brian has been stage managing for 20 years. He has worked on everything from a one-person show in a small space to large-scale musicals with an orchestra in larger venues.

Javier Dubon, Interim Executive Director and Director of Sales and Marketing, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (he/him): Named interim executive director in June 2025, Javier is helping lead OSF through its continued recovery and growth after the COVID-19 pandemic. Javier has a passion for driving revenue, program impact, and brand reach at nonprofit arts organizations. He has spent over a decade at presenting and producing organizations, marketing nearly every performing arts genre. Before joining OSF in 2022, he directed and managed marketing for theatres in Chicago and Texas. He serves on the adjunct faculty at DePaul University in Chicago, where he earned an MFA in arts leadership, in addition to a bachelor’s of music from The University of Texas at Austin. Why he wanted to join the CACO board: “I look forward to contributing to the cultural vibrancy and support of Oregon through my service on the CACO board.”

The post Welcome, new board members in 2026! appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

Building on the original 2014 Big Think, The Big Re/Think took place between September and December 2025 and included interviews with policymakers and sector leaders, a statewide survey, a virtual convening, and six in-person convenings across Oregon. Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed their thoughtful insights.

The process highlighted several key themes, including the need for a clearer and more unified story about the value of arts, culture, heritage, and humanities in Oregon, as well as the importance of identifying more sustainable funding mechanisms for the sector.

The CACO and CACF boards will be looking at these findings over the coming months as we begin shaping advocacy priorities for the years ahead.

If you’d like to dive deeper, you can also read the full report: Big Re/Think Final Report.

Thank you again to everyone who helped make this process possible.

The post The Big Re/Think findings are in! appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

The post Short session update: cultural funding protected appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

The post You belong here! appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

“The ominibus passed by the House is provisional good news,” Waterhouse told Oregon ArtsWatch. “We are pleased to see steady funding for NEA and NEH, given the overall decrease in the federal budget. We will hold off on celebrations until the bill is passed by the Senate and signed by the President and we see a notice of action from NEH regarding funding for state councils.”

Dear Friends,

As Congress continues negotiations on the Fiscal Year 2026 federal budget, we want to share an important, if mixed, update on proposed funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). (Read the full summary)

The short version:
Funding is flat and flat is not enough, but it is better than the alternative we narrowly avoided.

Where FY26 funding currently stands

Under the House Republican FY26 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations minibus, the NEA and NEH are each proposed to receive $207 million.

These figures match FY25, FY24, and FY24 funding levels.

Why this is not good news, but still matters

Let’s be clear: level funding is effectively a cut.

After years of rising costs, inflation, increased demand, and expanding responsibilities placed on cultural organizations, flat funding means less real-world capacity for arts and humanities work across the country. Grant dollars do not go as far as they did even two years ago, and organizations are being asked to do more with less.

That said, this proposal represents a silver lining in an otherwise hostile federal budget environment.

Earlier House committee proposals for FY26 would have cut NEA and NEH funding to $135 million each, a reduction of roughly 35%. Had those cuts moved forward, the impact would have been immediate and severe: fewer grants, smaller awards, reduced geographic reach, and long-term damage to cultural infrastructure, especially in rural and underserved communities.

Avoiding those cuts matters.

Recent years for context:

• FY21: $167.5M
• FY22: $180M
• FY23–FY25: $207M

We reached $207M through sustained advocacy and bipartisan recognition of the value arts and humanities bring to education, economic development, and civic life. Freezing funding at that level, however, risks undoing that progress over time.

What comes next

This proposal is not final. Negotiations between the House and Senate will continue, and the outcome will determine whether NEA and NEH funding merely treads water or begins to reflect the true cost and value of the work these agencies support.

Holding the line is not the goal. It is the least we can do.

We must continue pushing for funding levels that recognize inflation, demand, and the outsized return on investment that arts and humanities programs deliver in every state.

We will continue to organize and advocate on state and federal levels, but we will need your help. Please let us know if you would like to learn more about how we can advocate to our state and federal officials.

Thank you for staying engaged and for continuing to make the case that culture is not just optional infrastructure.

-CACO Board

The post What flat federal funding really means for arts and humanities appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

In 2026, the Cultural Advocacy Coalition Foundation (CACF) will carry this work forward as we translate The Big Re/Think findings into recommendations that will guide our work for the coming years. We are also preparing for the upcoming short legislative session, where we will be fighting hard to protect and preserve the funding commitments the state made in the last session. To do that, we’re asking for your support for the first time.

CACF is a small nonprofit with a statewide mission, and your tax-deductible year-end gift will help us:

– Advance The Big Re/Think ideas into real policy recommendations

– Strengthen cultural advocacy during and after the legislative session

– Keep community voices at the center of this work

If you believe in this effort, we invite you to share a contribution. Your support ensures we can move this work from ideas to action.

DONATE

Thank you again for being part of this statewide conversation and we look forward to continuing the work with you in 2026.

With appreciation,

The Cultural Advocacy Coalition Foundation

The post Thank you for helping us re/think what’s possible for Oregon arts and culture appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

By Marie Gettel-Gilmartin, Fertile Ground Communications (written in 2021; updated for 2025)

Many of us grew up learning the myth of Native Americans teaching the struggling pilgrims how to survive and celebrating with a feast in 1621. But for most Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.

Thanksgiving is in fact a holiday of colonizers.

What actually happened on Thanksgiving?

As Claire Bugos writes in the Smithsonian, “Massacres, disease, and American Indian tribal politics shaped the Pilgrim-Indian alliance at the root of the holiday.” The settlers stole land, spread disease, and exploited resources from the Wampanoag tribe. Then King Philip’s War “devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of European arrivals.”

Each year, Native American people gather to honor their ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples on the National Day of Mourning. Thanksgiving serves as a reminder of the unjust treatment that Native Americans have continued to receive since the 1620 Plymouth landing.

What is Oregon doing to shift the narrative about native stories and honor native peoples?

• KOIN 6 celebrates Native American Heritage Month with “KOIN Storytellers: Indigenous Life in the Northwest,” highlighting powerful stories from across our Native community. The special features the Native American Youth and Family Center’s Oscar Arana, Representative Tawna Sanchez, and Paul Lumley, along with moving segments on Elders who survived boarding schools. Thanks to the incredible work happening every day across NAYA in affordable housing, accessible childcare, Indigenous food sovereignty, youth education, and economic development. You can watch the special here.

• NAYA hosts Culture Nights each first and third Wednesday nights. They also celebrated their 22nd annual gala and auction earlier this month. Follow and donate to this great organization, which serves over 10,000 community members from nearly 400 Tribes across the country.
• The Willamette Falls Trust offers a number of great resources, including Native-owned businesses, book recommendations, events, and more.
• The Portland Art Museum is showcasing several amazing Native artists, including Marie Watt (Seneca), Dyani White Hawk (Lakota), Gail Tremblay (Onondaga and Mi’kmaq), Nan MacDonald (Metis and Algonquin), and Silas Aittauq (Inuit), to name a few.
• Willamette University is featuring “Ancestral Dialogues: Conversations in Native American Art” on permanent view in the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Gallery.
• The World Forestry Center, in cooperation with Indigenous artists and the High Desert Museum, features “Sasquatch: Ancestral Guardians,” until January 4, 2026. Indigenous peoples have long been in relationship with and shared stories about sacred forest protectors, often called Sasquatch and Bigfoot.
• The Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts shared an incredible list of suggestions, “Five Ways to Celebrate Native American Heritage Month in Reciprocity, Not Just Symbolism.”
• Multnomah County Library is offering a series of opportunities, including Native Storytime and Edible Native American Plants on 12/2,
• Our member organization, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, is a Native-led national organization committed to mobilizing Native artists, culture bearers, communities, and leaders to influence positive social, cultural, and environmental change. The foundation offers grants and funding to support Native artists in their creative endeavors.
• The Grand Ronde tribes have an excellent collection of tribal history curriculum videos for grades kindergarten to tenth.
• Oregon universities and colleges now offer financial assistance to members of the 574 federally recognized Tribes.
• The Oregon Department of Education rolled out a “Tribal History/Shared History” curriculum in 2020. Oregon schools now have historically accurate and culturally inclusive lessons about Native Americans. Oregon’s nine Tribes collaborated on this curriculum to banish stereotypes, myths, and inaccuracies.

What can we do in our organizations or at home to decolonize Thanksgiving?

• Think about what you eat for Thanksgiving dinner. How did these foods come to you? You can buy American Indian foods from local Tribes and businesses.
• Volunteer your services on Thursday, 11/27 or Sunday, 11/30 by helping out at Unthanksgiving events. Since 2021, NAYA has gathered community on the fourth Thursday in November, National Day of Mourning according to our Wampanoag relatives, to shift the narrative from a misleading colonial holiday toward one of mourning genocide and celebrating Indigenous survival. This year, they invite volunteers to join in honoring the land, uplifting Indigenous food sovereignty, and supporting the garden that nourishes our community year-round. Come lend a hand, learn, and stand in solidarity with Native peoples. Registration required.

• Visit the Indigenous Marketplace at SE Uplift on 11/28 and 29 and support Native artists and craftspeople.

• Visit Blackfish Gallery’s collaboration with NAYA, a holiday market on December 6.

• Buy from Oregon’s Native artists and performers, as we shared in this article from 2022.
• Visit the “We Are the Land” public art installation in Portland, a collaboration between the City of Portland and indigena (an Indigenous storytelling cooperative), the City Arts Program, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Multnomah County, and Metro.
• Learn which Tribes are native to Oregon.
• Donate to and follow local Native American organizations, such as the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the  Native American Youth and Family Center, and Wisdom of the Elders.
• Visit Native-owned farms and restaurants around the state and buy from Native-owned businesses.
• Plan an Oregon vacation to celebrate Indigenous Oregon by visiting Travel Oregon’s website.
• Listen to perspectives on thanksgiving from Wampanoag youth or watch a brilliant Native American film.
• Unlearn myths with your kids. The Portland Public Schools website has some excellent resources. Read books about Thanksgiving by indigenous authors, such as Catherine O’Neill Grace’s 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving and Joseph Bruchac’s Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving. Or use this great hands-on activity from Teaching Tolerance. Get adult book suggestions from firstnations.org.
• Support contemporary Indigenous struggles by learning about the #LandBack movement and current land struggles faced by the Mashpee Wampanoag people. The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture has a virtual resource pack on its Honor Native Land page.
• Find out what your community is doing to support the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis.
• Follow the work of indigenous-led organizations such as Native American Rights Fund, Illuminatives, National Congress of American Indians, and the American Indian College Fund...or organizations here in Oregon.

Arts and culture are two of the best ways to honor Native Americans and decolonize Thanksgiving, as we’re reminded by Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate and board chair of the Native Arts and Culture Foundation:

“We’ve come to a point in the world of great challenge, but also great opportunity, in which to revise and revitalize our communities. How do we do that? It always comes back to the arts, because arts revitalize, they tell us who we are, they tell us where we’re going and where we’ve been. Art makes connections on a deep soul level; it connects us in a way beyond words.”
-Joy Harjo

We can still be thankful while acknowledging the harm done to Native peoples by this holiday. To decolonize Thanksgiving, we need to examine our history to begin the healing process.

The Coalition acknowledges the many Tribes and bands who call Oregon their ancestral territory, including: Burns Paiute; Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw; Confederated Tribes of Cow Creek Lower Band of Umpqua; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation; Coquille Tribe; and Klamath Tribes. We honor the ongoing relationship between the land, plants, animals and people indigenous to this place we now call Oregon. We recognize the continued sovereignty of the nine federally recognized Tribes who have ties to this place and thank them for continuing to teach us how we might all be here together.

The post Decolonizing Thanksgiving in Oregon 2025 appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to you for being an ally and champion for arts, culture, heritage, and humanities across Oregon.

Over the past several months, we’ve had the privilege of connecting with so many of you through our Big Re/Think events — from Portland to Bend, and from Ashland to the coast. Whether you joined us in person or plan to be part of our upcoming virtual conversation on December 2, your engagement and insights are helping us reimagine what a vibrant, equitable cultural future for Oregon can look like.

The Big Re/Think project is about listening, learning, and building a collective vision for how arts and culture can thrive statewide not just in our major cities, but in every community, large and small. To ensure your voice is part of this process, we invite you to:

Take the Big Re/Think Survey

Your feedback will directly inform how the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon and our foundation advocate for the arts and cultural ecosystem in the years ahead.

Please also share this survey with your networks: organizations, educators, and supporters. This way we can capture as many perspectives as possible.

Thank you again for your partnership, your passion, and your ongoing commitment to strengthening Oregon’s creative future. Together, we’re ensuring that arts and culture continue to inspire, challenge, and connect all who call this state home.

The post The Big Re/Think and What Comes Next: Fill Out Our Survey appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

On November 4 at Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, more than 100 cultural leaders from across Oregon came together to strategize about what can be done to strengthen the sector. As ArtsWatch reported, “everyone focused on helping decide what to request from state lawmakers.”

The session was the sixth in a series of community conversations following earlier meetings in Eugene, Ashland, Baker City, Bend, and Newport. Participants (from the Oregon Arts Commission to small local nonprofits) agreed that Oregon’s creative organizations are vital to overcoming division and building community. Portland Opera Executive Director Sue Dixon summed up the shared spirit: “We are facing so many challenges in the arts today. This is the group that’s going to make things happen.”

Participants discussed expanding the Oregon Cultural Trust tax credit, establishing a dedicated statewide tax for arts and culture, increasing fundraising support for smaller organizations, and bolstering funding for regional anchor institutions such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the High Desert Museum.

As ArtsWatch noted, a statewide Steering Committee will refine these ideas into a focused legislative agenda, which will be proposed to our CACO board to consider for 2027. The agenda will reflect Oregon’s collaborative, forward-looking cultural community.

As facilitator Rob Fenty told participants, quoted in the article: “We have to identify a compelling need and the way to solve that need if we want the Legislature to listen to us.”

Read the full article at Oregon ArtsWatch.

The post Oregon ArtsWatch highlights The Big Re/Think appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

More than 125 people have already participated across the state at events in Eugene, Ashland, Baker City, Bend, and Newport.

You still have two chances to join in the discussion:

• Tuesday, November 4, Portland: 1-4 pm at the Patricia Reser Center in Beaverton (register)
• Tuesday, December 2, Zoom: 4 pm (register)

The meetings have been an exciting opportunity for us to re-engage with our statewide community, in many ways for the first time since COVID-19. The convenings have focused on identifying essential themes for a statewide value proposition for Oregon arts and culture. As one participant in Bend said, “The conversations reflected genuine care for Oregon’s cultural future — and a shared recognition that creativity and community are essential ingredients for collective well-being.”

A new Oregon ArtsWatch article by Jim Redden spotlights what we’ve been trying to do to address the growing challenges facing arts and culture nonprofits amid political and funding uncertainty. The effort builds on the original 2014 Big Think and aims to deliver a focused set of priorities to strengthen the state’s arts, culture, and humanities sectors for years to come.

Thank you to Claire Blaylock and welcome to Tristan Perrotti! Claire did an outstanding job launching The Big Re/Think, and now she’s moved onto a full-time job. She handed the reins to Tristan Perrotti, who’s a visual artist, political organizer, and adjunct professor at Southwestern Oregon Community College. He can be reached at Tristan@oregonculture.org.

The post Last few chances to participate in The Big Re/Think appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.