Donors, Sponsors, & Volunteers

Port Townsend Country Blues Fundraiser

Barbara Hammerman and Raymond Lavine are inviting the Centrum community to their beautiful home in Gig Harbor, Washington for food, fun and music to support Centrum’s Country Blues scholarship program. At this event the scholarship program will be officially named The Cephas and Wiggins Scholarship Fund in honor of retiring Centrum Blues Artistic Director Phil Wiggins.

The private concert takes place inside the magnificent Mighty Wurlitzer music room in Barbara and Raymond's home, Wurlitzer Manor, and is produced by Amanda Gresham's Delta Music Experience. Tacoma businessperson Ryan Harder will open the event with his award-winning slide guitar stylings, including original songs and stories full of the knowledge of the blues.

Please join us on Saturday, July 26, from 3-7 pm and hear some outstanding performances. Blues musicians Phil Wiggins and John Cephas will perform along with a young, accomplished blues duo from Southern California, Nathan James and Ben Hernandez, who triumphed over dozens of other groups in the 2007 International Blues Challenge.

Barbara, Raymond, and Amanda will underwrite all costs so that every dollar contributed will support the Country Blues Festival scholarships. A $100 donation is requested.

For further information, reservations, address, and directions, please contact Barbara at 253.858.4435 or barbara(at)wurlitzermanor(dot)com.

Checks should be made out to "Centrum" and sent to: Port Townsend Country Blues Festival Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 1158, Port Townsend, WA, 98368

Exhibits, Readings, Music, and More

Each year the Centrum Creative Residency Program is host to dozens of artists and creative thinkers from around the country and around the world. The list from 2008 includes a composer from Denmark, art educators from Seattle, an Illinois poet, visual artists from Pittsburgh, a theater actor from New York, and many more. They come here to immerse themselves in the beauty and inspiration of this place.

Some of them would like to share their work, read their poems, and play their music for the public. Facilitating these small events means helping in many different ways, from preparing receptions to hosting readings or assisting in the set up and removal of an exhibit. If you have some experience with exhibits or readings and are interested in working with visiting artists, I'd love to hear from you. Please drop a line to lisa@centrum.org or call 385-3102 x128.

Beautify Centrum's Front Door

Summer is coming to Port Townsend, bringing hundreds of people to Centrum's front porch. Let's paint! And plant some flowers, and clean the chairs, and hang a new bulletin board, and... well you get the idea.

Please join us by signing up to be part of the "Spruce up the Porch" party, tentatively scheduled for the weekend of May 31st-June 1st, weather permitting. You can email your rsvp to lisa@centrum.org, or call it in at 385-3102 x128.

News From the Director

As I write, fifth and sixth graders from across the state are arriving for “Waterworld,” where they will explore the marine environment and their individual creativity in partnership with scientists from the Port Townsend Marine Science Center and artists who have been teaching in an array of programs as part of our 2008 Young Artist Project.

With support from Washington’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Centrum has been providing creative residential learning experiences to elementary, middle school, and high school students for the last 35 years. While these workshops have a lower profile than our big summer festivals, their effect on participants can be even more profound. For example, Kisha Palmer, our new Director of Business Development, moved from Los Angeles to work at Centrum because she took a writing class here when she was 16 that changed her life, exposing her to “a universe of possibilities I never knew existed or could be available to me before.”

Last week I received a note from self identified “parents of a child who just experienced the magic of Centrum.” They write, “Our daughter was ecstatic about her experience. We were particularly impressed with her desire to explore beyond her passion for theater, to experience the other arts. Thanks more than we can say.”

And I echo that thanks, to you and all other Centrum supporters who make such experiences possible.

Summer Performances
April 15th is opening day for donors to get the very best seats at all Centrum summer performances, two weeks in advance of the general public.

Our ticket office awaits your call. They can answer any special questions you have and make arrangements for guests with special access needs. Call: 360.385.3102, x117 or 800.733.3608, weekdays, 9am – 4pm.

If you want personalized service but can’t order between 9 am – 4 pm our online order site is for you!  This year Centrum has joined forces with a new e-ticket provider to produce a greatly improved online ticket buying experience, including seat selection. Simply go, on our website, to your area of your interest (e.g., Jazz, Fiddle, Blues, Singing) then look to the left column and click on Buy Tickets.

Nine Things to Know about the New Fort Worden

1. For the last 4 years Centrum has been a very active participant in the Fort Worden planning process.

2. Centrum’s core business (residential learning) was adopted as the central feature of the Conceptual Plan for Fort Worden, approved in January of 2007 by the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission.

3. This plan designated Fort Worden a “center for life-long learning,” with an economy driven by tuition, food, and accommodations business generated and/or supported by all Fort partners, providing residential learning experiences for groups and individuals from around the region, nation, and world.

4. Over the last two years Centrum generated $1.25 million in food and accommodations business for the Park. The approved Conceptual Plan envisions four times that level of food and accommodations business generated by partner organizations at Fort Worden.

5. A special Task Force was called into being by the Washington State Legislature to determine what management structure would have the highest probability of building and sustaining a successful business based on residential learning programs at Fort Worden State Park.

6. The Task Force has determined that an existing or new nonprofit organization would be the organizational structure best suited to achieve the mission, vision, and goals outlined in the approved Conceptual Plan. 

7. At this point in the process it is reasonable to assume that Centrum—merging and significantly expanding upon its existing capacities with those of the current Fort Worden administration and other Fort partners—will be charged with supporting and coordinating program and business activities at the Park.

8. Such a transition would take place over an extended period and be guided by a carefully calibrated benchmarking process to ensure that the new management partnership develops the necessary and appropriate capacities to successfully implement the new vision for Fort Worden, while fulfilling the overarching mission and values of Washington State Parks.

9. The Task Force will make their recommendation to the State Parks Commission in August of 2008. For more details about the overall planning process at Fort Worden, as well as a schedule of opportunities for public input, visit the State Parks website (http://www.parks.wa.gov/fortworden/).

Our Promise
Four years ago Centrum created a document entitled “A Commitment to Change.” The central message in that document was that an organization with a mission of providing transformational experiences for its customers must itself embrace deep change as a core organizational value. Our 2004 Plan for Growth outlined a series of specific growth and change initiatives. With your guidance and extraordinary financial support we have achieved nearly every objective laid out in that plan.

We will not rest on our laurels.

As executive director, it is critical to me is that you continue to be proud of and excited by your ongoing investment in Centrum. Today, the board and staff are working harder and with greater focus than I have ever seen to achieve one result: Excellence. We are refining every system, testing every assumption, and—thanks to your support—utilizing new human and financial resources to ensure that Centrum will provide the richest educational, cultural, and customer experience imaginable. This is our promise to you.

Thank you, as always,

Thatcher Bailey

Centrum's Facebook Page

Whether you are a workshop participant, performance attendee, donor, volunteer, resident, or interested observer, we hope you will take a moment to visit our new Facebook page.

Facebook allows each of you to connect with us and extend your experience at Centrum. Upload your photos and videos. Talk about your past or upcoming workshops, review performances and readings. In large measure, 'our' page is 'your' page.

So take a look, and let us know what you think. We're exploring whether or not to create specific social networking sites for each of our major program areas. What do you think? (Now you have your first discussion topic on Facebook.)

2008 Donor 'Thank You' Events

Centrum thrives because of the courage and understanding of you, our donors. Each year, we endeavor to connect donors with experiences that deepen their connection to the people and activities their generosity serves.

For a complete list of our 2008 donor events, please download our 2008 "Thank You Calendar. For questions and more information, please contact our Donor Events Manager, Kendra Golden, at kendra@centrum.org.

January Letter from the Director

You have transformed Centrum. Over the last four years your participation and generosity have been responsible for more programs, more participants, more artists-in-residence, more partners, more scholarships, more volunteers, more donors, more sponsors and advertisers, and more free performances and public events. Numbers are one way to demonstrate the efficacy of your generosity. But numbers do not tell the whole story.

Centrum is where you come to be fearless. This is no small thing: Making art demands a particular courage—to take risks, be vulnerable, work harder than you have ever worked, fail more often than you succeed, and maybe let go of the life you have known, for a life you can no longer imagine not living.
Centrum thrives because you are part of a community that completely understands, participates in, and fiercely applauds such courage. Thank you for being fearless.

It is paying off. 2008 has the potential to be one of the most remarkable years in Centrum’s 36-year history. Experience Magazine (newly designed this March), a monthly e-newsletter (also launching in March), and our website will provide updated listings and details of specific events, but below I offer a sampling of some of the undertakings you make possible.

Last weekend, six British artists—in residence over the last three weeks—held an “open studio” that extended to the top of Artillery Hill, where 16 artworks played off the colors, textures, and architecture of the gun emplacements.

This weekend high school visual artists from across Washington arrive to participate in the new Young Artist Project, working with and learning from Ryan Horvath and Amy Johnson, part of an extraordinary artist-faculty team who will be in residence throughout 2008.

The first weekend in February, Mike Dowling, Steve James, and Centrum’s Artistic Director for Slide and Steel, Orville Johnson, will be in residence leading a Bottleneck Slide Intensive and performing February 2nd at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater.

The following week Fort Worden hosts the winter residency for Goddard College Creative Writing MFA, and February 21-24, Eileen Myles—perhaps the United States' best-known "unofficial poet"—will give a special workshop at Centrum about creating new poetry.

The final phase of Fort Worden planning will be complete and ready for Parks Commission approval in June. Centrum will play a pivotal role in developing, supporting, and promoting an increasingly diverse array of year-round creative, learning/teaching, and performance / exhibition opportunities at the Park.

You will be excited to know that in 2009, the extraordinary guitarist Corey Harris will succeed Phil Wiggins as Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival. As emeritus director, Phil will remain a vital presence, and is delighted that Corey will add his unique stamp to this beloved festival.

The School of Rock, a youth program initiated two years ago, has evolved into Roots of Rock, a July intergenerational workshop, featuring the first Queen of Rock, Wanda Jackson.

Partnerships continue to blossom. Centrum is working with Artist Trust to bring more choreographers and dancers to develop and present new work at Fort Worden. In April Centrum is hosting a gathering of Western States Folklorists, under the direction of Jens Lund. In October Seattle Theater Group and Centrum will co-produce a Seattle-based Fiddle Tunes event with the legendary Ralph Stanley.

Donors continue to increase scholarship and fellowships support (up 43% this year over last) so that exceptional students and artists from diverse geographies and backgrounds will enrich the creative communities that gather at Fort Worden.

In 2008 we will lay the groundwork for the renovation of six underutilized buildings into the new education campus at Fort Worden. Celebrating deep community connections to the Park, this capital campaign will solicit and celebrate hands-on volunteer labor and in-kind contributions.

Centrum and Fort Worden are able to expand opportunities at the Park because you are part of a community for whom this place and its programs hold deep and lasting value. Guided by enduring values that embrace both tradition and innovation, Fort Worden thrives on an economy of gratitude. All of us who work here have learned and continue to learn so much through our efforts to serve you.
Thank you.

Thatcher