Skip to main content

The Foundation - a new spoken word film about the elemental power of the arts

This spring was especially exciting for Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, between the announcement of our first ever “Arts in Society” grants, the Road to Results Forum we presented in partnership with the Wallace Foundation, and our 32nd Annual Awards Celebration.
Now that we’ve officially wrapped up the excitement surrounding the Awards Celebration, we can take some time to reflect on the event and all of the elements that made it special, from the inspiring honorees and tribute films, to a flash mob performance by Central City Opera to pay tribute to our long-time chair Lanny Martin who was stepping down, to one particular moment at the event that had guests stunned – in a good way.
When planning the Celebration, we knew we wanted to include an artistic element into the program. After all, that’s one of our core goals as a Foundation – to provide funding for some of Colorado’s best arts and cultural organizations. Little did we know when planning the performances, that we would be struck with something so profound and beautiful that it’s hard to describe through this article.
We commissioned Jovan Mays to create a spoken word piece to kick-off the programming for the Awards Luncheon in May. Now, we knew Jovan wouldn’t disappoint. He is, after all, a former Poet Laureate of Aurora, National Poetry Slam Champion and TED speaker and director of Your Writing Counts (a youth poetry program throughout Denver that has 200,000 students annually). Jovan takes words and spins them into gold.
In talking with him about this commission, we had asked Jovan to reflect on the power of the arts in our community, building on the work the foundation had done last year to answer the question “Why Arts?” on our website. What he did was go much deeper than we had expected, through soaring word and metaphor conjuring the elemental, literally prehistoric human drive to create, to express, through language, paint, clay, dance, and voice.
Jovan’s spoken word piece was so well-received, Bonfils-Stanton Foundation wanted to capture it visually so we can share it with others in a way that did it justice – not just as written word but as a performance and visual work. We’re excited to present The Foundation, a short film created by Sam Pike Films around Jovan Mays’ artistic piece. We are “the foundation” but the arts are THE Foundation! We hope you enjoy this piece and feel free to share it…

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Greatest Sacrifice Arts Workers Make for the Arts

With all the financial challenges arts workers are facing these days - struggling to balance the budgets of their organizations, or dealing with salary and benefit cuts on compensation that was modest to begin with - it is easy to view the sacrifices people make to work in this field as being entirely financial. Not to minimize the financial sacrifices - they ARE significant - but I would argue they are probably no more significant than a wide array of professions where people choose to devote themselves to the pursuit of "making the world a better place". This includes early childhood workers, teachers, social workers, the whole world of NGOs working in challenged communities, both domestically and abroad. And the sacrifices all these workers make are also not just financial. We all work long hours, and often under trying and unglamorous circumstances (though to outsiders arts work can seem glamorous). No, I think the more significant - and unique - sacrifice arts worke...
27 comments
Read more

UPDATED: A Guide to Arts and Culture Gift Shops in Philadelphia (Museum Shops and Beyond!)

Note: This was originally posted about six months ago, and with the holiday season upon us, I figured it was time to update and repost! The tourism web site UWISHUNU (from the Greater Philadelpia Tourism Marketing Corporation) has also recently published its guide to Philadelphia Museum gift shops, which is available here . Happy shopping! I have been a huge fan of museum and other arts organization gift shops for years. My work has given me the opportunity to explore lots of organizations, in NY, Philadelphia, and to some extent all across the country. Some are well known - others are hidden gems. The best ones have excellent buyers that find products relevant to the exhibitions, collections or presentations of the institution, but also stock unique artisinal creations by artists, craftspeople and designers that have a sense of place or direct connection to the organization's artistic focus. I am not talking about t-shirts and other logo-emblazoned merchandise, or touristy ...
8 comments
Read more

Inside/Outside - Art by Prison Inmates and Ex-Offenders

Leon Jesse James, "Space Modulator", acrylic on board. SCI Graterford The Art in City Hall program of the City of Philadelphia has just opened a new exhibition, INSIDE/OUTSIDE - Art by Prison Inmates and Ex-Offenders . This is a wonderful, powerful, and thought-provoking new show and I encourage everyone to see it. It is open until October 29th, on the secod and fourth floors of City Hall. More information is available here . The show involves participating artists from SCI Graterford, The Philadelphia Prison System, Art for Justice , Snyderman-Works Galleries , Connection Training Services , and the Mural Arts Program 's Youth Violence Reduction Partnership Guild Program, as well as local ex-offenders. Thomas Schilk, "Beetle", melted plastic spoons, paint. When I came to my position in 2008 as Chief Cultural Officer, one of the appeals of the position was the fact that the administration of Mayor Michael Nutter viewed the arts as being integral to virt...
6 comments
Read more