Vashon gets $2.3 million for arts and heritage

Sixteen island organizations are ringing in the New Year on more secure financial footing than in years past, thanks to an infusion of approximately $2.3 million in grants from King County.

The awards were made possible by Doors Open, a science, heritage and arts levy to fund operations, encourage equitable access and support cultural programming throughout King County through a .01% sales tax.

Local beneficiaries include the Backbone Campaign, Drama Dock, EnJoy Productions, Friends of Mukai, Open Space for Arts & Community, The Natural History Museum, Vashon Artist Residency, Vashon Center for the Arts, Vashon Events, Vashon Film Institute, Vashon Island Chorale, Vashon Maury Island Heritage Association, Vashon Nature Center, Vashon Opera, Vashon Repertory Theatre, and Voice of Vashon.

Funding for the program is administered through 4Culture, an agency supporting arts, heritage, preservation, and public art efforts in King County.

Doors Open

Doors Open, passed unanimously by the King County Council in December of 2023, has been hailed as a game-changer for a multitude of organizations and municipalities still recovering from the pandemic — a way to create employment, boost local employment and economies, and encourage equitable access throughout the cultural sector.

“Arts and culture aren’t a ‘nice-to-have,’ they are an essential part of healthy individuals and healthy communities,” said Councilmember Claudia Balducci, a key champion of the Doors Open legislation.

The sales tax measure — estimated to garner about $40 per family in King County — was modeled on similar successful initiatives adopted in Tacoma and Olympia, as well as nationally in Denver, Colorado, and St. Louis, Missouri.

Now, with the first round of Doors Open funding announced by 4Culture, organizations on Vashon and beyond — as well as other businesses that intersect with the arts and cultural sectors — may soon start to feel its benefits.

In total, the first round of Doors Open funding will provide approximately $70 million to 720 organizations countrywide — both in grants to support day-to-day operational costs that will be renewed for three years, as well as larger, one-time facilities grants to capital projects related to cultural, science and heritage activities.

Grantees ranged from organizations that had never before received 4Culture funding to mainstay institutions including The 5th Avenue Theatre, the Pacific Northwest Ballet and Woodland Park Zoo. Smaller organizations and those specifically serving diverse constituencies were also prioritized in the grants: Wa Na Wari, an arts center in Seattle’s Central District, and the Indigenous arts organization yəhaw, for instance.

Big Vashon grants

Vashon’s biggest allotment of the grants went to Friends of Mukai, which received $43,900 in sustaining support for the organization, and $810,732 in a one-time facilities grant to restore Mukai Farm & Gardens’ barreling plant to serve as a community food hub.

The facilities grant is a continuation of the county’s support of the restoration of the heritage site, which last September included transferring county ownership of the property where the plant sits to Friends of Mukai. The project has also received funding from prestigious agencies including the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The food hub, to be used by the Vashon Island Growers Association and other tenants, will include a fully equipped commercial kitchen; inside event spaces for workshops, meetings, markets and dinners; an agricultural tool library and grain mill; and cold and dry storage for crops, bulk produce, meat, animal feed and seeds.

“This gift gets us very close to meeting our $3 million fundraising goal and keeps us on target to finish construction in early 2026 — reopening exactly 100 years after the barrelling plant’s construction in 1926,” said Lynn Greiner, a founder of Friends of Mukai and leader and grant writer on the barreling plant project.

4Culture’s 2025 grant to Friends of Mukai for $43,000 for operational expenses, Greiner said, would be used to support Mukai’s programming, which is always free to the community.

“We are so incredibly grateful to 4Culture — their consistent and generous funding and partnership has enabled Mukai to become a regional treasure,” she said.

Vashon Center for the Arts (VCA) was awarded $80,566 in one-time facilities funding — money that will be used to complete renovations and upgrades both to VCA’s main campus and its historic Blue Heron Education Building.

Allison Halstead Reid, VCA’s executive director, said that the facility funding will be used to complete “unsexy” but crucial capital needs for the facilities including HVAC upgrades, fire and safety issues, crawl space, and sump pump upgrades.

VCA also received $155,800 in sustained support for its 2025 operations — funding that will be used to help pay for program expenses, utilities, staffing and more.

Before the passage of Doors Open, VCA had annually received roughly $20,000 per year in sustained support from 4Culture, and needed to reapply for that funding every year. Now, organizations will receive sustained support for three years — another change that Halstead Reid said she was deeply grateful for.

Two relatively new island arts organizations also received significant grants from Doors Open, both for sustained support and new facilities.

Vashon Artist Residency, a program founded in 2021 by islander Cathy Sarkowsky that has already welcomed 150 international and national artists to Vashon, received $320,000 in facilities funding to add a studio to its grounds on Quartermaster Harbor.

The residency is part of a worldwide web of such facilities that aim to provide artists with space and time to create new works as they connect and live in community with other artists. Through an application and panel process, it offers 2- and 3-and-a-half-week-long, self-directed stays to artists working in disciplines including visual, dance, theater, music, media, literary and interdisciplinary arts, offering comfortable living and well-equipped working spaces.

Its Doors Open facilities grant, said Heather Dwyer, executive director of the organization, will pay the complete costs of renovating an existing building on the residency’s property to serve as an additional large and flexible studio, complete with a printing press that can also be used to host public gatherings to further enrich Vashon’s arts and literary scenes.

“We’re excited about it as a functional space for the current practices of the residencies, but also, that there is a public element to it,” said Dwyer, citing possible uses for the space including classes, lectures and readings by artists in residence, and more.

Local contractors and builders will be hired to complete the building of the studio, Dwyer said.

Another acclaimed art and activism organization, The Natural History Museum — which moved to Vashon in 2018 — received $74,000 for sustained support in 2025 as well as a $397,000 facilities grant to create a traveling museum.

The mobile museum will be used to produce and present onsite multimedia and collaborative art installations, video projections, and socially engaged art activism projects in communities across the country, including in rural areas and tribal lands.

Beka Economopoulos, who co-founded the museum with her partner Jason Jones and other activists, artists and scholars, said the broader aim of the traveling museum is to “re-imagine what a museum is and does in the context of our time of overlapping and intensifying environmental and social crises.”

Economopoulos hailed 4Culture’s expansive new funding made possible through the Doors Open program.

“It’s surprising because, over many years and decades, neo-liberal budget cuts have hollowed out our core institutions,” Economopoulos said. “King County is at the forefront of refusing that model and supporting grassroots groups and communities, and the organizations that serve them. We’re honored to be a part of that.”

2025 Doors Open Vashon recipients

Sustained support grants:

• Backbone Campaign – $27,280

• Drama Dock – $22,900

• EnJoy Productions – $52,600

• Friends of Mukai – $43,900

• Open Space for Arts & Community – $51,700

• The Natural History Museum – $74,000

• Vashon Artist Residency – $23,900

• Vashon Center for the Arts – $155,800

• Vashon Events – $31,400

• Vashon Film Institute – $19,700

• Vashon Island Chorale – $15,400

• Vashon Maury Island Heritage Association – $51,840

• Vashon Nature Center – $37,100

• Vashon Opera – $32,900

• Vashon Repertory Theatre – $27,300

• Voice of Vashon – $26,160

Facilities grants:

• Friends of Mukai – $810,732

• The Natural History Museum – $397,000

• Vashon Artist Residency – $320,000

• Vashon Center for the Arts – $80,566

Book-It Repertory Theatre’s 2024 production of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” was presented in partnership with Vashon Repertory Theatre. (Michelle Bates photo.)

Vashon Center for the Arts, which won 4Culture grants for both sustaining support in 2025 and facilities upgrades, presents a wide variety of arts programming that includes vibrant dance and musical theater programs for youth. (Courtesy photo.)

A room with a view — and art in the process of creation — at Vashon Artist Residency. (Courtesy photo.)

Andy Krikawa sings for Vashon Opera, which was awarded $32,900 in sustained support for its 2025 operations. (John de Groen photo.)

Andy Krikawa sings for Vashon Opera, which was awarded $32,900 in sustained support for its 2025 operations. (John de Groen photo.)

“Whale People: Protectors of the Sea,” an outdoor exhibit and IMAX-style film screening, was developed by The Natural History Museum with the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation. (Kristen B. Grace photo.)

Islanders Matt Beursken and Jessica DeWire, at the opening of a 2019 exhibit at Vashon Heritage Museum, “In and Out: Being LGBTQ on Vashon.” The museum, through the Vashon Maury Island Heritage Association, was awarded $51,840 by 4Culture to sustain its 2025 operations. (File photo.)