Our Stories Through Art Coalition Receives Generous Grant from Oregon Community Foundation
by Debra Moon

The OSTA Coalition (“Our Stories Through Art”) has received its first grant award this year from the Oregon Community Foundation, and will be celebrating with the community in a kick-off event on Friday, June 27, starting at 5:00 p.m., across the street from the Talent Artisan and Growers Market on E. Main Street. It will be an educational art event with community participation!

In January of 2024, the Talent Business Alliance gathered representatives from five non-profits in Talent and formulated a three-year project with the goal of creating an interpretive art tour from existing and new public art pieces in and around Talent. This Art Tour will include stories from Talent’s history, with a special focus on inclusion of under-represented stories in Talent’s history - including the Latinx and Native American populations.

The partners in the OSTA Coalition are the Talent Business Alliance, Coalición Fortaleza, the Talent Historical Society, the Talent Public Arts Commission, and Talent Maker City. The coalition partners have all been involved in Talent’s efforts to recover from the pandemic and the Almeda Fire.

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By July of 2024, the coalition had completed a Strategic Plan, created a project timeline, and formed workgroups to meet project benchmarks. In the spring of 2025, an Art and Culture Grant was awarded to the OSTA project by the Oregon Community Foundation. The grant will fund four public art pieces and several storytelling or drama reenactments of Talent’s history.

 

Another grant has been applied for through Travel Oregon to begin infrastructure development of the Art Tour with some of the existing public art pieces around Talent. The Art Tour will include ADA access, and will be accessible on foot, by bicycle, or vehicle. The tour will be self-guided, provided in Spanish and English and will provide podcast or video renditions of the stories.

 

Grant applications have also been submitted for local story gathering / recording / translating and archiving. If you share your story, you will be making history! In partnership with the Talent Historical Society and Coalición Fortaleza, the OSTA project will honor and make record of as many histories as possible during the project.

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The OSTA project will produce community events and celebrations of Talent's diversity, culture, recovery, and our history. There is a historical value in this project, as well as an economic boost of creating a destination attraction. Southern Oregon is a place of tourism, and Talent, with its charming historic downtown and community pride is a perfect place for a commemorative and beautiful collection of art representing our stories and our history.