By Alison Dennis, Executive Director, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
I moved to Tillamook County in the fall of 2018 to serve as director of the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. People sometimes ask if I miss city life and the arts scene I left behind in Portland. My honest answer? I’ve never felt more connected to the arts—and to their power to inspire and uplift us.
Here in Tillamook, the arts don’t hang behind velvet ropes or come with East Coast ticket prices. They show up in the high school musical, where neighbors with a gift for design sew Broadway-worthy costumes for our kids and local musicians volunteer to fill the orchestra pit. They’re painted into more than 100 barn-side and street-corner quilt blocks on the Tillamook Quilt Trail, each one telling a story. They’re written into thoughtful columns in the Pioneer. They tune up with the local swing band at the farmers market, bloom in floral arrangements at the county fair and are tucked into the handmade blankets the neighborhood stitching club delivers to people in need. Just last week, a friend, grappling with life changes and loneliness after the loss of a loved one, grinned ear to ear telling me he’d auditioned—nervously, proudly—for a community theater production at the local playhouse.
This is what art looks like when it’s woven into daily life.
Still, there are gaps. According to the Oregon Department of Education’s most recent assessment, students in rural schools have significantly less access to arts education opportunities than their urban peers.
In 2020, the Sitka Center joined forces with the dedicated folks who ran Community Arts Project and Slug Soup here in Tillamook for so many years, with the goal of expanding free arts education throughout our region. Today, our K-8 Create program reaches students in 17 public schools across Tillamook, Clatsop and Lincoln counties—helping close the arts access gaps that rural school budgets often can’t stretch to fill.
When we invited U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to visit, we shared what’s happening here—how this community values the arts, and how students across the rural Oregon coast are using creativity to express what they see and feel in their home landscapes. She said yes.
On May 20, Limón will give a free public poetry reading at Nestucca K-8 School. It’s an honor to welcome her—and it’s also a reflection of the artistic spirit that already lives here.
“It’s official: poetry is cool,” reports Leeauna Perry, who directs the K-8 Create program, from a rising tide of classrooms along the north-central Oregon coast. “Students and teachers are so inspired that the U.S. Poet Laureate is coming to Tillamook County—and that their work will be on display when she’s here.”
Limón’s visit has inspired a tri-county poetry and photography project through Sitka’s K-8 Create program. Over 5,000 participating students have taken photographs, exchanged images with peers in other schools and written original poems inspired by our rural coastal landscape. Some of their work will be showcased at the event.
It’s moving to see how young poets are choosing to explore themes of connection, belonging and care in their art. One East Elementary poet wrote:
“In all places everyone is connected / On every place on the planet / Nothing isn’t family.”
Another imagines:
“a place that / it will treat / you well if / you do the / same for / it and its / inhabitants.”
Of course, free public events and programming aren’t free to host. I’m grateful to the growing circle of individuals and local businesses who support Sitka’s K-8 Create program. Sponsors of Ada Limón’s reading include the Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Community Foundation, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Siletz Tribal Charitable Contribution Fund, W. Gregory and Rosanne Berton—and our newest partner, the Tillamook County Creamery Association, which is donating free ice cream bars to share with the audience after the reading. Thanks to a generous matching gift from the Maybelle Clark Macdonald Foundation, contributions made in 2025 to Sitka’s K-8 Create program will be matched up to $2,500 per gift and $25,000 total.
Often, when resources feel scarce and uncertainty looms, the arts are dismissed as a “nice to have,” not a necessity. Budgets tighten at the state and regional level and in our own households. Investing in creativity can seem like something extra.
But it’s in the hardest times that the arts are most vital. When we invest in the arts, we expand minds, nurture self-expression and build bridges across generations and communities—broadening horizons at a time when many young people are facing unprecedented challenges.
The arts are not a luxury. They are a lifeline.
At a recent school board candidates’ panel, a father in the audience asked a question that stayed with me: How can we do more to help excite and engage students—and open their minds to new experiences and possibilities?
I hope the K-8 Create program and Ada Limón’s upcoming visit are part of the answer, alongside the work of so many others who help make our community’s cultural life vibrant. Whether you join us for Ada Limón’s reading or simply sing your favorite song in the shower, I hope you’ll keep making space for creativity—in your own life and in the life of our community.
Because art is already here. When we lift up the arts, we lift each other too.
…….
Free Poetry Reading with U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Tuesday May 20, 2025
Nestucca K-8 School, Cloverdale, OR—Doors open at 5:30pm, reading at 6pm
Reserve Free Tickets (https://sitkacenter.org/special-event-details/)
About the Sitka Center:
Now entering its 55th year, the Sitka Center champions art and nature access for all. Sitka Center’s growing youth program, K-8 Create, now
serves 5,000 students in 17 Oregon schools. Sitka is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit located in Otis, Oregon at Cascade Head. For more details visit
sitkacenter.org.