PHAME’s Commitment to Ending Systemic Oppression
Portland’s Tilikum Crossing bridge, captured by PHAME student Jeremy Grisham.
At PHAME, we believe that art is for everyone—and that art builds community, opportunity and excellence. Prejudice and privilege create barriers that we must systematically and strategically unravel until everyone in our community has equitable access to the arts, and to all aspects of life.
We stand in solidarity with our students, staff, community members and teaching artists of color who have faced systemic oppression. We are angered by the injustices they experience regularly in their lives, and commit to continued work within our organization and in our community to right these injustices.
PHAME also understands that prejudices that harm people with disabilities are magnified when combined with the systems that hold people back based on race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, religion and socio-economic status. We value collaboration across movements as key to dismantling oppression within our organization, our community and the broader society.
We envision a city of people empowered by the arts. A city where all artists, performers, and creative workers have the freedom, agency and platform to share and amplify their stories and experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that our actions—both conscious and unconscious—have benefited some communities while limiting opportunities for others.
Going forward, we commit to the following:
Our board of directors will conduct an equity audit in the next 6 months, in order to ascertain where we currently stand in this critical work and give us guidance for our future.
Our core leadership staff has begun a once-a-month anti-racist conversations, guided by recommendations laid out by the National Arts Educators Association, the anti-racist workgroups generated by the Arts Workers for Equity, and other resources. We will emerge from this work with new initiatives in order to dismantle daily organization practices that reflect institutional oppression.
We will continue to evaluate our outreach to new students, board members, staff and working artists in order to ensure we maintain an equity focus. This includes partnering with external organizations who prioritize anti-racism, advertising in BIPOC-focused spaces, and revisiting our recruitment strategies to ensure our spaces are welcoming to people of color.
As community members, we invite you to join us in addressing these issues, and work alongside us to create the world we all imagine—where art, storytelling and creativity are accessible to all.