Celebrating Culture Collaboratively

Today is Oregon Day of Culture. Across the state, thousands of people are celebrating Oregon’s unique culture by attending performances, visiting galleries, volunteering at libraries, touring public art installations, donating money, and otherwise just being joyful about the incredible cultural landscape that is the amazing state of Oregon.

Bag&Baggage is celebrating by (go figure, what a surprise) doing a show! Tonight marks the first of our final four performances of our powerful production of Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman. The show has received stunning audience and critic reaction, and we are incredibly proud that, as Hillsboro’s only professional theatre, we are able to bring such high quality, challenging drama to our friends and neighbors.

But producing work is only one way for us to celebrate Oregon’s unique culture. In fact, it is the smallest way: from our perspective, celebrating the cultural and artistic treasures of Oregon means promoting and collaborating with our colleagues, and Bag&Baggage is proud to be involved in a unique and innovative new program: a Washington County Cultural Collaborative marketing group.

As you know, marketing is expensive! Advertising, flyers, posters, websites, ticketing systems…they all cost money which, in turn, means we have to charge more for our tickets! Our new collaborative group is based on a simple principal: if someone comes to see a Bag&Baggage show, they are more likely to be interested in attending other types of arts and cultural experiences. Attendance at arts and culture is a predictor of future attendance at arts and culture…simple as that.

So! We have partnered with our colleagues in the professional arts throughout the county to swap ads in our programs, to list each other’s events on our websites, to promote activites and gallery openings during our curtain speeches, and to hand out flyers or display posters in our venues. In this way, we save a lot of money but also get immediate and direct access to audiences from throughout the county who we KNOW are interested in the arts and culture!

Who is involved in this great project? The best arts and culture groups in the county, including:

The Glenn and Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center, offering a wide range of classes, live music performances, visual art exhibitions, and events. They are just right down the street from the Venetian, and have an amazing (almost dizzying!) array of events on offer! Check them out by clicking here!

Pacific University’s Performing Arts Series is one of our areas best kept secrets! The series provides some of the world’s best musicians and performers an opportunity to play to audiences in Forest Grove and beyond, and offers students at Pacific University the chance to get access to world class performers right on their own campus! Check them out by clicking here!

Washington County’s biggest, sassiest, and best musical theatre company (the best in the state, for that matter!): Broadway Rose! We love Broadway Rose, and we know you will love them, too. With a program that ranges from original new musicals to blockbuster Broadways favorites, Broadway Rose is Washington County’s best bet for a lively night of theatre! Check out their production of Bingo running now! Click here for their website!

The Washington County Cultural Coalition and the Beaverton Arts Commission are also partners in our collaborative program, and their websites are full of information about the wide range of culture and arts available throughout the county. Click on the links above for more details.

Finally, our other partners include:

The Oregon College of Art and Craft, showcasing the amazing visual art talents of students and professors….

Sequoia Gallery, Hillsboro’s own visual art gallery in the heart of downtown, featuring the work of dozens of the region’s best artists…

The Washington County Museum, the center of our county’s heritage and history with dozens of incredible displays…

Print Arts Northwest, a collaborative of visual artists whose prints are sought after across the globe…

And finally, but by no means leastely!: Washington County’s Collaborative Library Services, managing our county’s incredible network of libraries. Our libraries are our greatest treasure, and there is always something amazing happening at your local library!

Just imagine if each of these organizations, all of whom offer Oregonians access to heritage, arts and culture of unprecedented quality, were able to share resources, share audiences, and promote a lifelong love of arts and culture!

What a way to celebrate Oregon Day of Culture.