OnColorado Arts Journalism Project

Mission statement 

The OnColorado Arts Journalism Project sustains independent, professional coverage of Colorado's performing and screen arts. We believe the work being made across this state — in major houses, in storefront theaters, in small towns far from the Front Range — deserves serious critical attention and honest reporting. We pay working journalists to see it, review it, and write about it, free from the commercial and institutional pressures that have hollowed out arts coverage nearly everywhere else.

Organization description

The OnColorado Arts Journalism Project is an independent journalism initiative covering Colorado's theatre, performing arts, and screen arts communities.

Arts criticism has been among the first casualties of the collapse in local news. Staff critic positions have been eliminated at newspapers across the country, and Colorado has not been spared. What remains is often press-release rewriting, thin listings, or nothing at all. A show can open, run, and close in this state without a single professional review — which means artists work without documentation, audiences make decisions without guidance, and the historical record of Colorado's cultural life simply goes unwritten.

We exist to fill that gap.

Launched in 2018, our flagship publication OnStage Colorado (onstagecolorado.com) publishes reviews, news coverage, features, and previews spanning the full range of theatre in this state — from the region's largest professional companies to community and university productions to the small independent companies working without institutional backing. We publish a weekly newsletter reaching 1,250 subscribers, produce a podcast covering the people and issues shaping Colorado theatre, and maintain a free statewide performance calendar used by audiences and companies alike. Each year we present the OnStage Colorado Awards for Theatrical Excellence (OSCA), recognizing outstanding work by artists and companies across the state.

Our newer publication, OnScreen Colorado (onscreencolorado.com), extends this work into Colorado's screen arts — film, television, and the growing community of filmmakers working here — and is steadily expanding its coverage.

Independence is the point. We are not affiliated with any theatre, producer, presenter, or arts organization, and we do not soften coverage to protect relationships. Our critics see the work and write what they think. That independence is only possible because our funding comes from readers, donors, and advertisers who want honest arts journalism to exist in Colorado — not from the institutions we cover.

Every dollar contributed goes toward the work itself: paying critics and reporters to attend performances and file reviews, sustaining the publications and the calendar that make the coverage findable, and expanding into corners of the state that go uncovered. Colorado's artists are making work worth writing about. We think somebody should be writing about it.