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About the Office of Arts & Culture

Information
Portland's Office of Arts & Culture logo on top of greyscale image of the Chinatown Gateway in Portland, Oregon.
Investing in artists, community-based arts programs, arts education, and public art.

Arts and culture are integral to our community and vital to Portland's identity as a center of creativity. Artists and creative workers help define our culture, fuel our economy, and enhance our quality of life. We celebrate creativity in all its forms so that communities can connect, companies can flourish, and students can succeed in school and in life.

The Office of Arts & Culture supports Portland's arts and culture ecosystem and expands opportunities for Portlanders to participate in creative experiences. We do this through arts education coordination, cultural planning, grantmaking, public art and the Percent for Art program, and more. Our vision: arts at the center of public life in Portland. Meet the team.

Arts Access Fund

Funded by an annual income tax of $35 per adult, the Arts Access Fund supports arts and music education in K-5 schools and grants to local nonprofit organizations.

Funds are distributed based on student population to hire arts or music teachers for kindergarten through fifth grade students at the six districts in the city: Portland Public, David Douglas, Centennial, Parkrose, Reynolds and Riverdale. The Office of Arts & Culture allocates up to 3% of net revenues to help coordinate arts education services and outcomes across Portland's six school districts. 

Remaining funds are distributed as grants to programs and nonprofit organizations that help make arts and culture experiences more accessible to the public, including K-12 students and underserved communities in Portland. Learn more about the Arts Access Fund

Grants for artists and nonprofit organizations

The Office of Arts & Culture is excited to partner with three local arts-focused grantmakers to distribute small grants ranging from $500 to $5,000 to individual artists and arts organizations. Grants funded in Fiscal Year 2024-25 will focus on supporting creativity, innovation, and career development within Portland’s vibrant arts community. Learn more about Small Grants for Artists and Arts Organizations.

Separately, the Office of Arts & Culture will provide direct, unrestricted operating support to approximately 73 established nonprofit organizations through our General Operating Support Program this year. An additional 7 nonprofit organizations that provide culturally specific programming and other services for current and historically underrepresented and underserved populations will receive Cultural Equity grants in FY24-25. Learn more about General Operating Support

Our Creative Future regional arts and cultural plan

In the fall of 2022, the City of Portland and a coalition of local government agencies launched "Our Creative Future," a comprehensive cultural planning process to develop a new vision for arts and culture in the Portland metro region. The two-year planning process culminated on May 22, when Portland City Council voted to accept the new regional framework for local government agencies—including Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties—to advance culture, creativity and the arts in their communities. 

The plan, which is based on input from more than 3,500 community members and was co-created by a regional steering committee, articulates a new vision for arts and culture: We envision a tri-county region where all of us have access to relevant and dynamic arts, culture and creative experiences as an essential part of our lives. 

Over the next year, the Office of Arts & Culture will develop a Portland Action Plan, detailing the specific strategies that the City of Portland will implement in pursuit of the overall vision. The Office will also launch a website so that Portlanders can monitor progress and provide additional input. Learn more about Our Creative Future and read the full report

Public art and the Percent for Art program

Public Art contributes to experiences that enrich the social, physical, and cultural environment of Portland, and promotes dialogue among people of all ages and backgrounds. By Portland City Code, 2% of the cost of the City's qualifying infrastructure projects are dedicated for public art. Funds may be used to commission, purchase, and maintain public artworks, fund artists-in-residence programs, and/or fund creative space. 

Over the last thirty years, thousands of pieces of art have been added to the City's public art collection and placed across Portland, from City buildings downtown to neighborhood installations. Today, the program places special emphasis on purchasing art from underrepresented artists and adding art in historically undeserved communities. The Office of Arts & Culture contracts with the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) to provide public art collection management services. Explore Portland's public art collection.

Other helpful links

Do you want to paint a mural? There are two options: RACC's public art murals program provides up to $5,000 in matching funds for murals that become part of the city's public art collection, and the City's original art mural program issues permits for other murals.

Portland Parks & Recreation provides a number of other arts and culture programs, services and opportunities; visit portland.gov/parks/arts-culture for more information.