NEWS & EVENTS

Hiring Now

Join the team at Caldera Arts. More than 15 seasonal positions to fill, including Youth Advocates, Teaching Artists, Kitchen Staff, Challenge Course Facilitator, and more!

It's not too soon to get excited for summer 2024!

Meet Our Residents

Caldera is thrilled to introduce this year’s cohort of Artists in Residence! Between January and March of 2024, we’ll welcome 21 artists and creatives who will spend time at Caldera’s Arts Center in Central Oregon, diving into transdisciplinary, multicultural, traditional art forms, sound, culinary, multidimensional communication, and exploring self-identity.

Take a deeper dive into Caldera’s impact:

Here is your chance to listen to the full Hearth Festival 2023 closing statement by Kimberly Howard Wade, who shares her vision for Caldera, and the importance of the creative process and whole-brain thinking.

Support Creativity

Created by our friends at Willamette Week, Give!Guide is the most fun you can have while supporting Caldera Arts and your favorite local nonprofit organizations!

•Donate on a BIG GIVE DAY, and you'll be entered to win an exciting prize!

•The first 75 donations of $50 and above will receive a custom pair of Caldera socks because you rock!

•Anyone who donates to North Pole Studio @northpolepdx or Caldera Arts on December 7th during our live community event or online will be entered into a drawing for a special Swag Basket developed in collaboration with our nonprofit partner, North Pole Studio! If you donate to both organizations on December 7th, your name will be entered twice!

In Loving Memory

This September 30th, 2023, Caldera's community is remembering our founder, and dear friend, Dan Wieden.

For the last 26 years of his life, Dan poured his creative energy —and his heart— into building Caldera as a resource to inspire and support youth from underserved rural and urban communities.

Today, Caldera is poised to become the destination for developing creative solutions and inspiration to solve our communities' most pressing challenges, one learner at a time. We believe, as Dan did, that when youth are given access to the explosive power of creativity, they can change their world, and even the world at large.

Caldera Community Residency

We are thrilled to bring back our Community Residency, which provides Caldera alumni with time and space for creative practice, research, or planning.

This year's residency takes place December 15-23 and is targeted towards previous participants—former youth and staff—of Caldera's youth program.

Hiring

We have a new year-round staff position available!

Scholarships

Caldera Youth Program alumni are eligible to apply for our annual scholarship awards. Scholarships support tuition at colleges and trade schools. Details and application link on bio or contact meg.ball@CalderaArts.org with any questions.

Application Extension!: October 15th, 2023

Our Summer 2023 Programs

Caldera behind the scenes!

With heart and passion, we gear up to welcome our summer program youth participants to the Central Oregon Art Center. For the past two weeks, we have been intensely sharpening our innate superpowers to serve our youth community. In turn, we are ready to deliver on our mission, to inspire and support youth from underserved rural and urban communities by awakening the potential of their creative voice. We are elated by everyone's energy and ready for summer 2023's programs starting July 1st through mid-August.

Artists In Residency Open Call

Artists, creatives, and cultural workers come together to build skills, community and explore your passion! Engage in projects that inspire growth, combat oppression and activate cultural change. Caldera Arts invites artists of any discipline to draw inspiration from the natural world surrounding our Arts Center in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Central Oregon.

Be part of the well established artist community of 300+. Expanding our creative community allows us to deepen our mission to inspire and support young people from historically underrepresented urban and rural communities by awakening the potential of their creative voice.

AiR Program 2023 Golden Spot Residents

Caldera Arts was proud to host an amazing cohort of artists this spring. Golden Spot Residencies are an additional component of our AiR program, an ongoing program that is only possible by The Ford Family Foundation and direct contributions from community members.

Save the Date - Hearth Festival 2023

For Caldera Arts’ second annual Hearth Festival. A daylong, hands-on, experiential celebration of creativity.

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Family-Friendly, Maker Stations, Music & Art Performances, Artisan Foods, Spectacular Light Installations, and Natural Wonder.

Visit us this coming late October at our Art Center, located at
31500 Blue Lake Drive, Sisters, OR 97759.

Artists in Residency 2023 (AiR)

We are very excited to announce our 2023 Caldera Artists in Residence (AiR).

This year we received and reviewed hundreds of applications, from all across the country, to participate in our residency program. These artists and writers are largely multidisciplinary and from diverse backgrounds. The projects they are pursuing include music and sound, contemporary craft, queer liberation, poetics, creative youth engagement, and so much more.

Each artist was chosen to join us this year because we believe they offer an incredible amount of inspiration worth recognizing. We are honored and excited to welcome them to the Caldera Arts Center at Blue Lake to ground themselves in their work alongside one another.

Join The Team

Summer and full-time opportunities are still available!

Join the team at Caldera Arts. We have full-time positions and more than 15 seasonal positions to fill, including Youth Advocates, Teaching Artists, Kitchen Staff, Challenge Course Facilitator, and more!

It's not too soon to get excited for summer 2023!

Dan Wieden, March 6, 1945–September 30, 2022

Dear Caldera Community,

With profound sadness, we share that our founder and most cherished friend has passed.

Dan was a visionary, a community-builder, and a man who understood the value of creating shared space. His vitality and creativity impacted every member of this Caldera Arts community in ways that will continue to unfold for generations.

A caldera is the impression left where an eruption has occurred. Dan was truly an eruption of creative chaos and wonder.

In 1994, a few months after his business partner, David Kennedy, retired from Wieden + Kennedy, Dan began a serious talk with himself.

“Wieden, what do I really care about? What is driving you nuts? If you could change one thing before you check out, what would it be?”

If you ever heard Dan talk about the advertising business, then you will know that the answer was pretty simple. In his own words:

“Like it or not, in this business I essentially hire a bunch of white, middle class kids…pay them enormous sums of money…to do what? To create messages aimed at kids of color. Kids in the inner city. Kids who create the culture the white kids try like hell to emulate. But if you live in the inner city, odds are you don’t even see advertising as one of life’s options.”

So he asked himself what he was going to do about it?

“Where are the Black voices? The Latino voices? The Asian? The Native American? Where are the voices of white poverty?

And why don’t I get at the root of the problem? What is stopping me, Dan, from working directly with these kids?”

The resounding answer was: Nothing. Nothing at all.

So in 1996, Dan Wieden and his family started Caldera Arts, an arts and environmental summer experience located near Sisters, in the Deschutes National Forest. They created a camp for young people who were underserved— black and brown kids; white kids who were navigating poverty and kids living with the inequities of geography. They called it Camp Caldera.

Dan believed in the messiness that comes when you fuse art, environment and mentorship in a long-term, stick-with-you, never-let-you-go kind of way. Every year, he would spend two weeks, three weeks, sometimes the entire month of August, at the Arts Center with the middle school and high school students who were discovering and immersing themselves in creative practice, environmental study, and becoming a community. He would, “come back smelling of campfire and wet dogs… and invigorated.”

This summer, we all missed having Dan at the Arts Center. Especially the young adults who first experienced Caldera in sixth grade, and who continued coming back every summer through their high school graduations. This summer, after two years of pandemic, they came back yet again—many of them in between semesters at college or on vacation from year-round jobs. They came back to be staff, spending nights and days with the rising generation of Caldera young people, and continuing the vital work that Dan created a home for more than 25 years ago.

Dan believed when youth are given access to the explosive power of creativity, they can change their world, and even the world at large.

Thank you, Dan, for the eruption of artistic chaos and wonder that you sparked into reality. This caldera, your Caldera, will always bear the impression of your heart, your warmth, and your leadership.

Our deep condolences to the Wieden family, and to all who knew and loved Papa Bear.

In Remembrance of Julie Mancini

Dear Caldera Community,

It is with our sincerest condolences to all who loved her that we share the news of Julie Mancini’s passing. Julie was a beloved member of Caldera’s community, and our hearts are with her family at this time…

Caldera Arts Announces New Executive Director

After an extensive search, we are proud to share that Kimberly Howard Wade has joined Caldera as Executive Director. Kimberly joins us from PGE where she served as their Director of Project Zero. She brings to Caldera a wealth of experience regarding leadership, management, development & communications, programs, the arts and financial acumen, making her the best candidate for Caldera 2.0. Please give Kimberly a warm, Caldera welcome! — Joy Fowler, Caldera Board Chair

Meet Kimberly

Kimberly comes to her role at Caldera after leading PGE Project Zero, Portland General Electric’s social impact initiative to empower the next generation to create cleaner, greener, more equitable communities. As part of the Community Impact Team at PGE, she provided leadership, project management and community engagement strategies for education and workforce development. She also served as the program officer for the PGE Foundation. Kimberly is excited to lead Caldera in the work of transforming communities by harnessing the power of creativity to make lasting cultural and social change.

Kimberly has worked in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She was the Trust manager of the Oregon Cultural Trust, managing director at Portland’s Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, education/outreach director for Artists Repertory Theatre and the Director of Catering for Il Solito (formerly known as Pazzo Ristorante,) part of the Kimpton Group. She currently serves as chair of the Oregon State Board of Education; she also serves on the board of directors for Portland Playhouse, and the Center for Performance and Civic Practice. She previously represented Oregon on the Western States Arts Federation's Regional Multicultural Advisory Committee. In addition, Kimberly is an accomplished actress, with credits in New York, the Williamstown Theatre Festival and several Portland theaters. After attending Wellesley College, she received her BA from Pacific Union College in political economic history. She holds an MFA in acting from Columbia University and has taught theater at Walla Walla University. Kimberly lives in Gresham, Oregon with her husband, their twin sons, and their dog.

Welcome to Caldera, Kimberly!