The First Two Projects

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The Wheeler Center for Arts and Education

Investing in the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater to develop new programs and management, and upgrade facilities to attract partners and presenters from around the region and country.

Chris Beck Photos 229 Photo: Chris Beck 

Higher Education Initiative

Raising funds to support a major collaboration between Goddard College and Peninsula College to expand local, regional, and national higher-ed learning opportunities and develop a first rate education facility in Port Townsend.

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A Learning Laboratory

Fort Worden is a learning laboratory where the site serves as a focal point for exploring our place in the world. As a center for life-long learning, it represents a confluence of creativity and experimentation. A hallmark of the park is its commitment to cooperation and stewardship—with resident organizations, the community of Port Townsend, and the environment. Through activities in the arts, environmental education, local history, recreation, stewardship and sustainability, the park addresses the whole person.

—from the 2008 Conceptual Plan for Fort Worden State Park

We Must Be As Great As Our Park

A primary goal of the the Fort Worden Collaborative is to significantly increase the number and kinds of opportunities for individuals and institutions to participate in a new integrated economy at Fort Worden, and to incentivize that participation by enhancing and investing in the Park’s commitment to public benefit. The more aggressively the Park manifests and markets its deep commitment to public benefit the more successful we will be at attracting visitors, volunteers, philanthropists, and  investors. 

Our parks hold our best values and highest aspirations as individuals and communities. The public sector alone cannot muster all the resources needed to prove out this premise at Fort Worden. All of us who care about this place can be part of a legacy project that will profoundly benefit our community and the lives of millions of visitors over the next 100 years.

—from the draft  for the Fort Worden Collaborative

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Creative Learning and Community Development

In ways large and small, people of all ages and all walks of life come to Fort Worden to find, or create, their place in the world. They learn in community with others. They are guided by the hearts and hands of mentors steeped in tradition, but urging new discoveries. Values are clarified. Awareness grows. Creation happens. Lives expand. 

The Fort Worden Collaborative attracts and manages public and private sector resources to: 

  • Expand residential learning opportunities in the arts, environmental sciences, health and recreation, and historic preservation;
  • Preserve, rehabilitate, and re-use historic buildings; and
  • Increase and enhance public access to Fort Worden State Park.

Over the next five years the Collaborative will demonstrate its capacity to 

  1. Secure public, institutional, and individual philanthropic support for identified capital development projects at the park. 
  2. Attract new, high-visibility program partner(s) to Fort Worden, committed to providing residential learning opportunities year-round, and work with existing partners to attract program and financial resources needed to increase their residential programming. 

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