2025 Northwest Folklife End of Year Campaign

I hope this finds you looking forward to the turn of the year, keeping treasured traditions, or starting new ones.  

As I sat down to write to you this year, I found myself struggling for clarity and a sense of priority. 

So many urgent needs are pressing on our communities at once, food security, community safety, and the increasingly visible stoking of fear and “othering.” I kept returning to the same questions: what matters most right now? Where do we place our care, our resources, and our attention? 

The more I sat with it, the clearer the answer became: this isn’t an either/or. Our humanness is rooted in a sense of belonging and ability to envision a better future.  

Yes, our basic support systems are under huge strain. People are stretched thin, and the programs meant to bolster us are crumbling. At the same time, our identities, cultures, and creative practices – the very things that make us – are at risk of being erased in this moment of manufactured scarcity.  

At Northwest Folklife, we uplift creativity, cultural expression, and joy as tools of resistance.  

Joy is often misunderstood as frivolous or optional. We see it differently. Joy is essential. Joy is built from and through connection, curiosity, and the effort to truly understand one another. Embracing our own cultures and traditions requires care: a commitment to honoring identity without weaponizing difference or allowing passion for cultural practice to become a source of division. When people gather to share culture, listen deeply, and approach one another with openness, they push back against isolation, fear, and “othering.” Joy is not passive; it is created together, through relationships, compassion, and care. 

Gathering, sharing culture, and passing knowledge across generations is not a luxury. These acts are the very foundation of thriving communities; where people see themselves reflected, valued, and connected, especially in moments when the world feels uncertain or divided. 

These values show up across our work. 

Through our Creative & Cultural Workforce Development (CCWD) program and our archives work, Northwest Folklife invests in people and relationships — not just outcomes. CCWD offers more than internships; it creates deep, relational opportunities that support participants well beyond a single placement, connecting them to mentorship, professional development, and ongoing career pathways while embedding them meaningfully within community. This year, CCWD supported 26 young people with paid creative work across 12 cultural organizations, strengthening both individual growth and organizational capacity.  

Similarly, our archives work approaches preservation as a shared responsibility, using digitization as a tool for connection that keeps cultural knowledge rooted in people, place, and lived experience. Together, these efforts reflect an interdependent model of care: communities steward their histories, individuals build sustainable creative futures, and opportunity is sustained through collective investment. 

We continue to bring people together, not in spite of the challenges we face, but because of them. Because sharing ourselves, practicing reciprocity, and collective action underpin joy and community healing that the world desperately needs right now.  

As we look ahead, we are grounding ourselves in a guiding principle for 2026: Ubuntu - I am because we are. 

Our longest running program, the annual Northwest Folklife Festival, has always been more than an event. It is something created collectively, year after year, by the artists, culture bearers, volunteers, staff, partners, and community members who gather in-shared purpose. What you experience at Folklife is the result of countless acts of generosity, reciprocity, and care - people offering their time, knowledge, stories, and traditions so that others may be inspired to learn, connect, and feel that sense of belonging. 

The legacy that we carry forward is not something static or preserved behind glass. It is a living movement. It is practiced and imperfect. It is joyful and uncomfortable. It is shared and personal. It evolves through relationships and responsibility. It asks us not only to inherit culture, but to actively steward it, to expand our understanding of whose stories are held, whose voices are amplified, and how we carry them forward together. 

Today, I’m asking for your support to continue this work. As we close 2025, I invite you to make a gift that is meaningful to you to uplift our vision and mission, where culture is shared with care, joy is rooted in connection, and our legacy remains a dynamic, collective force that continues to grow and endure.  

Sincerely,  

 
Reese Tanimura 
Managing Director