ART is good.

Art is GoodBECOME A METHOW ARTS MEMBER TODAY

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Continue to enjoy a year’s worth of FREE ART Magazines right in your mailbox. Secure CREDIT CARD renewals can be made HERE.

YOUR DONATION SUPPORTS PROGRAMS IN OUR COMMUNITY

Your membership supports important programs such as Missoula Children’s Theatre, the Young Writers Conference, our Performance Series, Arts Education Night, Ekphrastic Writing Residencies, Critters of the Methow Valley with Jody Olson and annual Block Printing residencies with Laura Gunnip and Emily Post. Help us to continue to provide FREE programs in our schools for students.

Your membership enables us to provide art programs in EDUCATION, PERFORMANCE, PROMOTION AND LEADERSHIP. 

We are grateful for your commitment to sustaining and enhancing our community through valuable art programs. Thank you for your direct involvement in our organization and in making our community a special place to live.

Your investment in Methow Arts helps us to directly achieve important goals and sustain vital programs. Last year members supported over 5,200 students and 380 teachers through our ART Education Program hiring local professional artists to teach in seven school districts in Okanogan County. Your support ensures that students and adults in need have access to quality art programs.


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All students’ programs are free in our schools, thanks to you.

During the summer of 2014, hundreds of thousands of acres burned or were destroyed in the Methow Valley and throughout Okanogan County as a result of wildfire, leaving more than 350 families without homes, including many students served by Methow Arts’ Okanogan Region Arts Education Partnership. Numerous evacuations of neighborhoods created frightening and stressful experiences for other students. Methow Arts would like to recognize the valuable role that the arts can play in the healing process. It is our goal this year, through art experiences, to help in the healing process for these students. Now more than ever, students—most of whom already lack art teachers at the elementary school level—need access to the high-quality arts education provided by Methow Arts. Please help us in ensuring that students have access to these opportunities.

Valuable membership dollars help to leverage grant funding for our efforts. And importantly your support ensures that students and families in need have access to art experiences. Our school programs are offered free of charge and last year we gave away 535 free tickets to local social service agencies to guarantee equal access to our performance series. This year we continue to honor this program and offer free tickets to those who lost their homes or businesses in the fire season this last summer. We continue to hold a strong belief that ART should not be a privilege, but instead a core component of our community and our lives, no matter the income bracket.


Here’s a glimpse of some of our core programs and goals:

ART EDUCATION IN LOCAL SCHOOLS

We bring the Arts into six school districts and over 5,000 students and 380 teachers through our ACCESS TO ART – Art Education Program, with a focus on grades K-8 for students who would otheJanos Zelinka (Photo by Matt Cashore)rwise go without Art Education. We support the local economy by hiring over 31 local teaching artists and sending them into schools, and we support the teaching staff by providing ideas for curriculum integration.  Students learn the art of clay, watercolor, dance, theatre, music, block printing, drawing, mural creation, mask making and so much more. These programs create an opportunity for students to learn how ART can transform both their personal and academic lives. Because of these experiences, we witnessed students’ improvement in communication with their families, their teachers and their interpersonal lives. Students told us that they felt more empowered to take “risks” in areas such as public speaking, solving mathematics problems and acting as a mediator/helper for their friends.

Art creates innovators, problem-solvers, and critical thinkers.  In today’s fast-paced and often complicated world, the ability to view problems from different perspectives and solve them creatively and efficiently is essential. The arts education students in the greater Okanogan County receive through our Artist in Residence program prepares them to approach problem solving with good judgment, resourcefulness, and perseverance.

CLICK HERE FOR FORMcontinue to enjoy a year’s worth of FREE ART Magazines right in your mailbox. 


PERFORMANCE

Methow Arts curates a dynamic Performance Series and Public Art initiative. We carefully select artists from across the globe to perform for our students and our community. Last year we presented DakhaBrakha from the Ukraine, former Poet Laureate Sam Green, 3TD_jessesings14_940x498Missoula Children’s Theatre, Nomadic Massive from Montreal, Utah Ballroom Dance, the Methow Arts Festival, and recently the Phoenix Festival through a successful collaboration with TwispWorks and the Confluence Gallery. This year brings the award-winning Cashore Marionettes on November 1st, The Kinsey Sicks on December 12th, The Grammy-nominated Duhks on February 6th and East Los Angeles-based Cambalache on April 18th. We also fund local artists for innovative public art pieces including the Twisp Ponds, Methow Valley Sports Trails Kiosks and Little Library Projects.

Your membership allows us to fund this diverse array of performance as admission to events rarely if ever covers expense. The caliber of performance not only provides us with the opportunity to experience stellar public shows, but membership dollars directly fund performers’ many hours of working with students in our schools. Most performance groups work with students in up to seven school districts for up to five days prior to their main performance. Students gain exposure to new cultures, beliefs, art forms and often new languages and countries.

CLICK HERE FOR FORMcontinue to enjoy a year’s worth of FREE ART Magazines right in your mailbox.


art takes couragePROMOTION

Our ART Magazine is being used as a model of successful ART Promotion across the state, with over 4,500 subscribers and a print distribution of 15,000, the quarterly publication highlights and supports local artists, exhibits, classes, events, ideas and students’ work. The comprehensive calendar of events and classes is accompanied by full articles and photographs that are also online at MethowArts.org. Please remember that you receive a mailed copy of this magazine as a Methow Arts member! Your renewal will ensure that you continue to receive this well-loved publication in your mailbox.

LEADERSHIP

Methow Arts participates in vigorous advocacy, collaboration, and networking for the arts locally, regionally, and nationally. Our Executive Director, Amanda Jackson Mott, was recently elected First Vice Chair of the Washington State Arts Commission), serves on the boards of the Icicle Fund, the Washington State Arts Alliance, Economic Alliance of Okanogan County and leads delegates from Central Washington to travel to Olympia each February to have face-to-face conversation with Legislators about the value of the Arts. We are currently taking the lead in representing the State of Washington in Community Development across the country.

Your membership helps sustain vital art programs in the Methow Valley and throughout Okanogan County. If you would like, we would be pleased to sit down over a cup of coffee to talk about the many ways we are working to enhance and sustain our community. Please call our Executive Director, Amanda Jackson Mott, with any questions or suggestions at 509.997.4004 or email her at Amanda@MethowArtsAlliance.org

Your donation is fully tax deductible.


 

CLICK HERE FOR FORMcontinue to enjoy a year’s worth of FREE ART Magazines right in your mailbox. 

Thank you so much for being a key supporter of the arts in our community and for being a BIG part of Methow Arts!DANBERT NOBACON, FALL MAGAZINE

Warmly,

Amanda Jackson Mott, Executive Director

and the Methow Arts Board and Staff