Mission
The Cascadia Artist in Residence Network’s mission is to support, advocate, and communicate about artist-in-residence programs in the Cascadia region located in the northwestern United States.
Who we are
The Cascadia Artist in Residence Network (CAiRN) is a consortium of artist-in-residence programs and their supporters location in the broadly defined Cascadia region of the Pacific Northwest. It is an affinity group based both on what we see as the shared character and regional nature of our organizations, but equally on celebrating and learning from the variety and diversity (geographical and operational) of our member organizations. The group exists to collectively spread information about our various organizations both individually and as a cohort, to raise awareness of artist-in-residence programs in the region, to share knowledge among staff and board members, and to explore mission-oriented initiatives and projects that might be better accomplished in partnership than working as individual organizations. Current membership is in Oregon and Washington, but we see our area of focus as being more broadly the northern part of the Pacific Coast and the Interior West. CAiRN can imagine potentially serving as members organizations located as far and wide as Northern California, Nevada, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alaska. Our most recently updated official purpose statement, adopted in April 2018, is: “CAiRN is an association of creative residence programs in the Pacific Northwest Cascadia region. We work together to amplify and celebrate the unique diversity of AiR programs in our region. Member organizations share program and operations expertise to provide a collective network of support that enhances staff and board members’ ability to best fulfill their missions. We provide the public with shared resources about current residency opportunities in the region.