The Short Answer: Pickathon is the festival (The Party). Creative Neighborhoods is the non-profit that builds it (The Mission).

The Long Answer: Most people know Pickathon for the music. But to the design world, it is known as Oregon’s largest architecture festival.

For 20 years, we have built massive, reusable neighborhoods in the woods. We call this “Circular Design.” In 2022, we made this mission official by launching a 501(c)(3) non-profit called Creative Neighborhoods.

Why did we separate them?

To preserve our immersive world and our community impact.

In 2022, inflation and rising costs across the board changed the economic reality. We realized we could no longer build our unique neighborhoods within the budget of a music festival. We faced a hard choice:

1. Charge $1,000+ per ticket to cover the build costs.

2. Stop building the neighborhoods and become a generic festival in a field.

We chose a “Third Way.” By launching a non-profit, we can fund the architecture through grants and donations. This keeps your festival ticket affordable. It also lets us keep building at a scale that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

What does Creative Neighborhoods actually do?

We use the festival as a testing ground to solve real-world problems.

• We Push Boundaries (R&D): We don’t just decorate the woods; we invent new ways to exist in them. We hire world-class architects to design structures that challenge what is possible with sustainable materials [Explore the Neighborhoods],

• We Train the Future (Mentorship): We pair pro designers with students and apprentices. These students gain a “peak life experience” by building massive structures alongside their heroes.

• We Create Legacy (Community Impact): We design for the weekend, but we engineer for the decade. Every project starts with a question: Where will this go next? We design permanent community assets first, then use those parts to build the festival neighborhoods. When the music stops, nothing goes to the landfill. We have turned stages into sleeping pods for veterans and stocked local high schools with tons of lumber. Now, we are expanding our designs to create a wider range of permanent assets—proving that a temporary festival can build lasting infrastructure.