The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works, a program of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance (PATA), serves our community’s artists and audiences by offering a new works festival that features a myriad of artistic endeavors by local artists. The festival provides art-makers and producers a marketing umbrella and professional development opportunities. The annual festival offers a platform that fosters relationships between artists, producers and arts patrons, and deepens an appreciation for the abundant “acts of creation” in our community.

Fertile Ground is committed to the continued examination and expansion of efforts toward equity, inclusion, diversity and accessibility at every level. The festival works toward creating an inclusive, welcoming festival platform shared by intersectional identities and underrepresented voices across race, ethnicity, color, age, gender identity and sexual orientation (LGBTQ2IA+), and physical or intellectual ability.

Fertile Ground respectfully acknowledges that the work made for the festival in the Portland metropolitan area was created on the unceded ancestral lands and traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia (Wimahl) and Willamette (Whilamut) rivers. We honor the many diverse Indigenous peoples who reside in this region — past, present, future. With grateful intentions, we humbly recognize the generations of peoples who have stewarded these lands, indeed these fertile grounds, for eons and still do.