The storied Albina institution transferred to new ownership Sept. 1. New owners hope to push the arts space to new heights.
A heat wave did not keep the smiles from people’s faces as they gathered at the Albina Arts Center in Northeast Portland to embrace the announcement of its new owners Aug. 15. Speakers stood in the shade of the one-story brick building on the corner of Northeast Williams Avenue and Killingsworth Street, undeterred by cars and buses rumbling past.
Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center and Rosemary Anderson High School, or POIC + RAHS, became stewards of the Albina Arts Center on Sept. 1, following a selection process involving Black civic, business and arts leaders.
The storied arts center has upheld Black performers, visual artists and activists throughout its history. The arts community hopes new ownership will have an impact, giving programs for youth and adults a chance to grow and thrive.
Welcoming event
Ericka Warren, a longtime Portlander and partner with the consulting firm Try Excellence, kicked off the event with an introductory speech.
“I'm a very, very proud third-generation Portland Albina native,” Warren said during the speech. “In my former life, I was a professional songwriter and musician, and I was trained right in this arts community. My firm celebrates innovative solutions to create environments where human brilliance is valued and celebrated, and it’s a real pleasure to see the positive outcomes of this work,”
Warren spoke about the process of choosing the new stewards of the arts center as Try Excellence community engagement consultant and facilitator.
“For the past 18 months, we have been engaged in a community visioning process with leaders and stakeholders in Portland’s Black community in strategic visioning and planning for the future of the Albina Arts Building,” Warren said. “This process identified community priorities within a set of key values and that guided their work. Central to these values, the community was adamant that the Albina Arts Center be by us and for us and that it reflect, honor and perpetuate the brilliance of our Black cultural, artistic expression.”
The next speaker was revered educator, activist and Albina Arts visioning and selection committees member Joyce Braden Harris, known to some as “Mama Joyce.” She remembers moving to Portland in 1969 from New York and finding culture at the Albina Arts Center.
Harris described the many nights going over proposals on the selection committee as a labor of love and vision.
“One of the things that was so inspirational to me was to see the generations that participated,” Harris said.
Harris had the honor of announcing POIC + RAHS as the new owners of the Albina Arts Center, and she introduced POIC + RAHS CEO Joe McFerrin.
At the beginning of his speech, McFerrin shared “Mama Joyce” taught him how to read in the first grade at the Black Education Center. He went on to highlight the partnership POIC + RAHS will have with arts and culture group PassinArt and the understanding they have for their community and its history.
“We share the desire to ensure that the Albina Arts Center is informed by the past, present and potential future of the site,” McFerrin said. “POIC is committed to the success of vulnerable youth and adults. We will celebrate Black art and creativity in multigenerational ways building on local innovation.”
The CEO emphasized the role that the arts center plays in the community.
“The arts are a key component for a thriving community and have well-established and long-lasting positive impacts that lead to success across all fields and sectors,” McFerrin said. “Ownership of the Albina Arts Center will allow us to provide a much-needed community service to support the sustainability and growth of Black-led arts organizations, Black artists and artists’ spaces in Portland.”
This shared vision was echoed by Jerry Foster, PassinArt board president, who promised to keep his speech “shorter than an Easter sermon.”
Foster brought to light the history of PassinArt and the Albina neighborhood, where the organization was founded in 1982.
“Since our founding, we have been dedicated to ensuring that the Black theater movement, which began in the United States in 1821 and which draws from even older African traditions of oral history and stories, remains an alive and vital art drawn from our community, for our community,” Foster said. “We are the oldest continuous producing Black theater company in Oregon, dedicated to passing on Black art, history and culture down through the generations.
“The Albina Arts Center will be our home base in the neighborhood, in the place where this organization was born. It will bring the next generation forward by doing what we have been doing for more than 40 years.”
Keeping arts and culture alive with PassinArt
In partnership with POIC+RAHS, PassinArt will implement a five-year plan including a youth academy, art exhibit space and leased performance and rehearsal space.
Artistic expression, storytelling and activism will be encouraged at the Albina Arts Center Youth Academy, which will be central to the PassinArt program. Intergenerational mentoring will be provided for theater, dance, music, visual arts, culinary arts and land use. This will create connections to opportunities for colleges, theaters and artists.
A youth-led program will focus on self-direction, social justice and leadership development for young women.
The partnership with the new owners will provide stability for the arts community.
POIC + RAHS, new owners
POIC + RAHS provides alternative education and mentoring, family outreach, employment training and placement. This Black-led nonprofit, established in 1967, serves mostly people of color.
Education, career training and wraparound programs at POIC + RAHS help youth and adults experiencing poverty and homelessness. This includes a re-entry program for those impacted by the criminal justice system. Pro-social activities and mentoring provide ways for families to keep at-risk youth away from gang involvement.
The Rosemary Anderson Prep School, according to the website, provides opportunities for entrepreneurship with local businesses, advanced post-secondary education and athletics. The school offers small classes with project-based learning and individual guidance from academic advisors. Advanced Placement classes are offered, as well as college-level courses.
The POIC + RAHS commitment to the success of at-risk youth and adults fits with the vision of creating a safe and healing space for the Albina Arts Center. It will carry out the plan of centering Black arts through partnership with PassinArt.
Selection process
The process for choosing POIC + RAHS as the new owner of the Albina Arts Center was stringent and transparent. It started with a year-long visioning process to set criteria for revitalizing, activating and potentially expanding the center. The Oregon Community Foundation, or OCF, worked in contract with Try Excellence to facilitate the process. All in all, more than 25 committee members were chosen from leaders throughout the Black community.
According to OCF, the committee drove a community-centered process to ensure a collective vision for the arts center along with the nonprofit chosen to own and steward the building.
The committee followed through with reading proposals, guided by community input, to make an informed choice. Interested candidates for ownership, drawn from nonprofits, submitted proposals in May and were interviewed.
Visioning and selection committee members came from a variety of backgrounds, including performance artists, community organizers and people in the business community.
Sharon Gary Smith, Portland NAACP president, Winta Yohannes, Albina Vision Trust executive director and Tai Carpenter, Don’t Shoot PDX board president, took part in the visioning committee. Bobby Fouther, a visual and performing artist with Mr. BobbyDance, and Shalanda Sims, World Stage Theatre executive director, also participated.
After the visioning process came selection. This committee included D’Artagnan Caliman, 1803 Fund vice president and Stephen Green, Greener Pastures NW founder and Business for a Better Portland executive director.
Several committee members were involved in the entire process from start to finish, including Karis Stoudamire-Phillips, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion and community initiatives at Moda Health, Kimberly Moreland, Oregon Black Pioneers president, and former Oregon State Sen. Akasha Lawrence Spence.
Tenants
Current tenants of the Albina Arts Center include S. Renee Mitchell’s organization I Am M.O.R.E. in the Soul Restoration Center, North Portland Community Acupuncture and Turn! Turn! Turn! Record Store and bar. McFerrin made it clear POIC + RAHS will honor the current tenants’ leases. Before any changes are made, they will conduct a collaborative community process to ensure the building meets the needs of the community. Some renovations will be made to make space for changes.
History of the Albina Arts Center
Albina Arts Center served as a meeting place for the Albina neighborhood and a hub for the arts and culture since the 1960s. Membership fees and donations kept the center running until September 1976, when lack of funding forced it to close.
In cities throughout the United States, this was a challenging time for Black communities. In the 1960s, the city of Portland and the state bulldozed homes in Albina to make way for Interstate 5 and in the 1970s to expand Emmanuel Hospital, according to the Fair Housing Council of Oregon. Black homeowners were displaced. Gentrification crept in.
The Black population of the neighborhood declined, but the city has made efforts to bring families back, and construction of new subsidized housing is underway, according to the city of Portland’s website.
Despite challenges, the Albina community persevered in keeping the arts center alive. Albina resident Betty Overton revived the arts center in December 1976 when the nonprofit she led, Albina Women’s League, took possession. This stewardship was effective for many years, but eventually, poor leadership caused the property to be neglected and misused, according to the OCF.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2015 to recover the arts center for the community. Because of this, a court-appointed receiver took over the property for charity purposes. The OCF accepted temporary stewardship from the receiver in 2016. The North Portland Economic Development Fund leased out the property since then in connection with the OCF.
Memories and inspiration
Harris remembers seeing the Black and Tan Dance Troupe perform at the Albina Arts Center in the 1970s when admission for a jazz show cost 50 cents. It was a place where children could go with their families to see a performance.
“It was the hottest thing going in the Portland Black community in the seventies,” Harris said.
She described her work on the selection committee as inspirational. As an educator and activist, Harris has worked with young people for many years, including her time on President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
“When young people I was able to influence tell me, ‘Mama Joyce, I’m just doing what you taught me to do,’ that’s what keeps me going,” she said.
Harris feels invested in the past, present and future of the Albina Arts Center.
“The thought of it being revitalized is exciting to me,” Harris said. “For children and community folks to say that’s our place. Art has been an entity in this community for decades.”
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