Well, folks... we’re ready to take the next big step.

Bunker Arts Collective started in 2023 with a pretty straightforward mission: organize trash cleanups, commission murals by emerging local artists, and elevate creative placemaking across Everett and Snohomish County.

Operating as a bare-bones, volunteer-run team on less than $10,000 a year, we’ve led over 80 cleanups, removed more than 20 tons of trash, and commissioned 8 original murals. In 2024, we were honored to receive the Mayor’s Arts Award for Organization Making an Impact. We accomplished all of that while balancing full-time jobs elsewhere and operating without a permanent home base.

Our core vision has always been to establish an accessible, brick-and-mortar community arts center in Everett and eventually make Bunker a fully staffed, full-time operation. After nearly three years of this work on nights and weekends, we’re ready to start building toward that, and we’re asking for your support to make it happen.

While our initial dream leaned toward opening a facility in South Everett right out of the gate, thoughtful planning and a deeper look at our city’s landscape led us to adjust our strategy.

All that said, we’re looking downtown 👀

Downtown Everett already has the essential foundation for a vibrant urban core: exceptional local restaurants, venues, retail, and service providers all within walking distance. Having lived in Downtown Everett for the past four years, I’ve watched our neighborhood grow firsthand. New residential developments are bringing more people to the area, yet the ground-level streetscape hasn’t quite kept pace with the community’s needs.

Ground-floor spaces are currently dominated by professional offices that close by 6:00 PM on weekdays, alongside long-term vacant or abandoned properties. Between open evening establishments, dark windows, and quiet liminal stretches, foot traffic and street-level energy can disappear pretty quickly when there isn't a hum to draw your attention down the street.

While our local bars and restaurants do fantastic work, we think Downtown Everett is missing a real third space after 6:00 PM... a welcoming, low-barrier place to gather, create, study, collaborate, learn, work, or catch a late-night performance without financial strain or the expectation of buying an alcoholic beverage.

We also have larger performance venues in Everett. Still, there’s an opportunity for something smaller and more intimate: a space designed for local theater, improv, comedy, drag, cabaret, live music, community events, and town halls.

That said, this is a natural next step for Bunker!!

Our work has always been about bringing people together around the places they live, creating opportunities for artists, and making Everett a better place. We’ve done that through cleanups, murals, and public art projects without our own space. Downtown gives us an opportunity to bring those pieces together and create a place where arts, culture, community, and everyday activity can happen under one roof, built from the ground up on a sliding-scale model to ensure financial accessibility for everyone, regardless of income.

We envision an inclusive, late-night community arts center featuring:

Sliding-scale makerspace memberships and workshop access so creative tools are available to all, no matter your budget
Affordable artist studios, classrooms, and rehearsal spaces
Office, workshop, and community flex spaces
An art supply and creative retail shop featuring local makers + immersive exhibitions + physical media
An accessible, budget-friendly late-night food and beverage option (In our opinion, Everett needs a milkshake and fries spot!!)
Intimate performing arts spaces

We want it to be a place where you can spend an evening making something, take a class, work on a project, rehearse with your band, meet with a community group, grab a quick bite to eat, see a local performance, or just hang out without worrying about a steep price tag. It will give local artists, makers, performers, and community organizations an affordable place to work, create, teach, and connect.

And importantly, we want this space to make Bunker sustainable and help us take this next step.

Right now, Bunker exists almost entirely around the edges of our lives. We’ve built something we care deeply about while working full-time jobs elsewhere, and we want to change that. The long-term goal is for Bunker to become our full-time work, with a team that can devote its time and energy to operating the center and continuing our community development work across Everett.

The center itself will help make that possible. Tiered memberships, studio rentals, classes, workshops, retail, food and beverage, performances, and event spaces can create a diversified, community-funded revenue model. Those who can afford to contribute more will help subsidize access for others, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that supports our day-to-day operations, pays full-time staff equitable wages, and keeps access open to all.

But we don’t want that revenue to exist just to keep the doors open. We want the success of the downtown space to first support the organization’s day-to-day operations, then help fund the equity-focused work we’re already doing, and then support the work we haven’t had the capacity to do yet throughout Everett.

That includes Refresh Everett, our vision for community-led improvements to neighborhood corridors through cleanup and beautification, storefront enhancement, public art, historic preservation, third spaces, and community programming. It also includes our future Community Programming Fund, which we envision as a way to put resources directly into the hands of local artists, residents, organizations, and community groups to create their own programs and projects. These are the broader initiatives we want additional capacity and support to make possible.

We’ve spent nearly three years figuring out how much we can accomplish with volunteers, a tiny budget, and no permanent space. Now we want to see what’s possible with an accessible home of our own, a full-time team, and a sustainable, community-first sliding scale model behind it.

We know this won’t happen overnight. We’ll apply for grants, work with property owners toward short-term arrangements that can help us get started, build partnerships, and continue earning your trust and support along the way. We’ll take this one step at a time and build it the same way we’ve built everything else at Bunker: by showing up, keeping doors open to everyone, and putting our foot on the gas.

That’s the next chapter of Bunker Arts Collective, and we’d love to have you help make it happen.

Evan Reed - Founder of Bunker Arts Collective

Build The Bunker Fund

Our vision for an Everett that is lively, welcoming, and thriving for everyone.