Our partnership with the Portland Trail Blazers dates back to the early years of Right Brain and has been consistent ever since, including our 2014 arts advocacy video with Portland Legend Jerome Kersey. Once again this year, our friends at the Trail Blazers were the true definition of an incredible community partner as we launched first annual runway show, SHIFT: An experiment in fashion design on September 21, 2017. Besides being an event sponsor, the Trail Blazers went above and beyond with their participation: the Trail Blazers collaborated with Una Rose of Looptworks to create a garment out of old Trail Blazers uniforms that would be modeled by the Trail Blazers’ very own Television Analyst, Lamar Hurd. And what’s more, the Blazers’ Courtside Reporter, Brooke Olzendam, served as one of our 2017 SHIFT runway judges.

We now are thrilled to share with you an exclusive insider look at our collaboration with the Trail Blazers at SHIFT this year. Check out the video below to see what our partnership is all about:

Lamar, Brooke, and the entire Trail Blazers organization rocked the runway that night. We are grateful to have their support for SHIFT and we are already counting down the days to SHIFT 2018, so save the date for next year: Thursday, September 20, 2018.

SHIFT: An experiment in fashion design is a celebration of equitable education, creativity in the classroom, and sustainable fashion benefiting our arts programming in local Portland metro K-8 schools. Whether participants were novice creators or seasoned taste-makers, in our first annual runway show we invited nineteen rookies and established designers/design teams alike to debut runway garments made from recycled materials and found objects. To read more about our first annual runway show, read the recap on our blog.