This year, Swenson Say Fagét joined the Arts Corps community as our newest Festa sponsor! A structural engineering firm with offices in Seattle, Tacoma, and Ellensburg, Swenson Say Fagét’s work focuses on designing systems within buildings and art pieces to ensure that these remain standing even when tested by people, snow, wind, or earthquakes. 

Upon learning about it, this work felt unexpectedly resonant. What is arts education if not structural support for young people? The creativity, critical thinking, sense of connection, and deepened belief in one’s abilities fostered by Arts Corps programs are all necessary assets, helping students persevere when faced with challenges and inclement climates. Moving beyond metaphor, Swenson Say Fagét highlights the importance of arts integration, since it is both math and drawing which helps to create and communicate structural system designs.

Brett Mozden, a principal engineer at the Seattle office, shared with us the impact of art education in his career. Although he did not feel like an artistic person growing up, his father kept him motivated to keep trying. In college, Mozden took architecture classes and learned much more about sketching and drawing. These skills have been very useful to him as a structural engineer, and he recommends them for anyone in the profession. Mozden reflects, “I don’t think I would be where I am today without the art programs available as a child and in college for someone like me that wasn’t naturally artistic but always had a desire to get better.” 

Like Arts Corps, Swenson Say Fagét also understands the value of community. Internally, the office culture prioritizes the comfortability of its members, allowing everyone to actually enjoy what they do so that they can be better collaborators. This culture is Mozden’s favorite thing about the work: “It’s very respectful of people as people.” 

Externally, the firm feels connected to the city. The Seattle office has been housed in Belltown for years and many of the company members have grown up in the city itself. This means the firm has witnessed the many changes Seattle has experienced over the last 10 years and employees such as Mozden recognize the disruption specific communities have faced. This is why Swenson Say Fagét likes to partner with organizations around town, such as Food Lifeline, the BLOCK Project, and now Arts Corps to make a positive impact. 

Mozden says, “We are always looking to connect with ways to help make our city a better place. We feel Arts Corps is a great way for us to help encourage the young artists in the city to express themselves and make the environment in Seattle a better place through their passions in art.”  

Arts Corps is grateful for our partnership with Swenson Say Fagét, who helps us support our city and our young people for a lasting, brighter future!  

— GRECIA LEAL PARDO, Development & Communications Coordinator

Read More

For those in the design community, it comes as no surprise that Arts Corps’ longest-running Festa sponsor is an architecture firm. Mahlum, a Seattle architecture firm established in 1938, has supported Arts Corps consistently since 2008. The value of arts education is not lost on those who spend their days designing built environments that foster a sense of safety, connection, and curiosity — the very same outcomes that Arts Corps’ teaching artists work to achieve with students in the classroom!

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Anne Schopf, a partner at Mahlum and longtime Arts Corps supporter. Drawing the connection between Mahlum’s work and Arts Corps’ mission, Anne described that arts education was profoundly formative for both her and her colleagues. She reflected: “I can’t imagine not having it. Many of us are all so committed to understanding art itself. If not art, what are we living for? We [Arts Corps and Mahlum] care about the same things. We’re just doing it in different ways.”

Equity and community are two values shared by Mahlum and Arts Corps, and a specific way that they play out at Mahlum is in the firm’s design process. They try to center those who don’t have a voice at the table, honoring the culture and traditions of the primary occupants of the space. For example, in preparation for the design of a new hospital in Nome, Alaska, Mahlum’s design team visited with elders, students, healthcare staff, and local villages to gain a deeper understanding of the values and challenges facing the region’s people. This practice integrated Nome’s rich local culture with the hospital’s ultimate design.

It was clear from my conversation with Anne that curiosity is a core component of an architect’s job. When asked what her favorite thing about working at Mahlum was, Anne responded, “I get to learn something new every day. Right now, I’m learning about autism. How wonderful is that? I get to learn about new ideas that I don’t touch, but I’m learning through the work we’re touching.”

This passion for learning is exactly what we work to nurture through our arts education programming at Arts Corps. My conversation with Anne clarified that we at Arts Corps share a commitment to spaces that cultivate learning and creativity with our friends at Mahlum.

We’re immensely grateful for their partnership!

— CHRISTA MAZZONE PALMBERG, Development Manager

Read More

For the past several years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center has supported Arts Corps as a sponsor for our annual Festa event. The Discovery Center is a free public space that takes visitors of all ages on an interactive journey, bringing the connections we share with others across the globe to life. 
 
With a vision to educate, inspire, and motivate people to take action through storytelling, the Discovery Center is a key partner in Arts Corps’ work to revolutionize arts education by igniting the creative power of young people. In the words of Deborah Sepulveda, the Discovery Center’s Manager of Youth & Public Programs and long-time Arts Corps partner: “We believe our programs amplify powerful stories of our local community in order to foster inclusion and belonging, convene and connect people, share unheard stories, and highlight opportunities to act.”
 
Despite having to close its physical doors last spring, the Discovery Center has continued to provide powerful programming. Last March they kicked off a series of free, virtual lunchtime events called In Community We Flourish that highlight community organizations creating change every day. The upcoming series will be in partnership with the South Seattle Emerald and Civic Commons.
 
The Discovery Center shares Arts Corps’ commitment to youth leadership and prioritizing youth voice. Every year, the center hosts the annual Teen Action Fair, which provides youth with a platform to tell their stories of making a difference. As Deborah sees it, “Youth want to be involved, taken seriously and deserve to be heard. Young people have led the charge on some of the biggest shifts in social change and justice throughout history and we continue to learn from their ideas to change the world… take the time to listen to their questions, ideas and feedback and we will definitely have a better world.”
 
Arts Corps is grateful to have partners like Deborah and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center working with us to cultivate youth creativity and leadership. Their sponsorship helps bring us one step closer to our vision of a world where barriers to arts education no longer exist and all young people can creatively lead the transformation of schools, neighborhoods, and beyond.

— CHRISTA MAZZONE PALMBERG, Development Manager

Read More