Jack Straw Foundation

Mission

Jack Straw Cultural Center is a multidisciplinary audio arts center that exists to foster the communication of arts, ideas, and information to diverse audiences through audio media - to keep art, culture, and heritage vital through sound. We provide creation and production opportunities including radio, theater, film, video, music, and literature. We serve over 2,000 individuals a year through direct services in our facility and over 25,000 individuals through radio broadcasts and podcasts of our artist, youth, and community productions.

Description

Please help us support our arts and technology programs for underserved youth. For over 30 years Jack Straw has had a special commitment to serving youth with disabilities, English Language Learners, students from low-income families, and other underserved populations. These students often face special problems in adapting to school situations as well as to general life experiences. We are dedicated to helping all of these students create art. Our creative technology programs are tailored to meet their special needs. We provide students with the tools to tell their own stories and capture them as art.

With your help, we can continue to provide music, literacy, and family engagement programs for English Language Learners; gallery workshops for visually impaired students, sighted friends, and families; and our 29th year of summer music and radio theater programs for blind and visually impaired students throughout Washington State.

"The partnership with Jack Straw Cultural Center has become a critical component of the Spanish Language Arts classes at Denny International Middle School. The poetry project gives students an authentic audience for their words, experiences, and messages. The work with the vocal coaches builds students' confidence in their Spanish reading skills, as well as public speaking. After the trip to the studio this year one student told me, 'Now I know that I can read in Spanish. That was really hard, but now I know I can do it.'"
 -Liz Barry, Dual Language Spanish Immersion teacher, 

Jack Straw Cultural Center is a center for artistic creation, experimentation, education, and presentation committed to keeping art, culture, and heritage vital through sound. Since starting community radio station KRAB-FM in 1962, we have provided individuals with the tools and encouragement needed to express their art and ideas through audio. Our primary activities include residency programs for artists of all genres working with sound; audio-based education programs for youth and adults; programs for arts, heritage, and other non-profit organizations; and public presentations including artist talks, exhibits, performances, radio programs, and podcasts.

Among our core values are:

• Creativity/innovation: Our Residencies encourage artists to expand their work in new directions, such as by using technology or collaborating with artists from other genres.
• Communication: We value the use of audio in the creation and presentation of new work and as a means for preserving stories. Interviews, radio programs, and podcasts give our audiences opportunities to hear artists talk about their work, their creative process, and why it is important to them.
• Access: We provide opportunities for individuals to tell their stories using audio technology, with special attention to individuals with disabilities and English Language Learners.