I was at lunch with the recipients of the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Cultural Innovation Fund last week. Near noon, just outside the dining room, people were introducing themselves via what they were doing – the creative arts district prototype project, the entrepreneurial development lab for artists, the center for digital game research and design.
Imagine, fifty intensely creative thinkers in a room. My head was spinning. A brain trust? A transformative trust? A passion trust?
Oh, to be a fly on the wall and hear all of the eager conversations and quick project updates buzzing throughout the room. It was a gathering appreciated by all and captured on my trusty Flip video camera for you.
Sans doute, we had great conversations, some heard and some overheard.
Like this one.
“Oh hi! How great to see you again, you always look so fabulous, what is that you’re wearing? It is way too cool! I never know what to wear to these things. But you always seem to.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You look absolutely fine.”
“Do I? I just walked into a boutique and said, ‘I have to be somewhere in 30 minutes. I need to look like a noteworthy grant recipient. Do something, please!’ And this is what they did. Don’t you love that they didn’t put me in black? ”
“And navy is just as black, only its navy. ”
“I know! I was tempted by something she had in pink…”
“Oh please! Pink? No. Pink is the navy blue of India. What were you thinking?”
“You and Diana Vreeland are so right. So now I don’t have to angst about what I’m wearing and I can concentrate on what everyone is doing.”
I like striding. It makes me feel au courant which is very important when you are among cultural smarty pants in large numbers. Wear great shoes.
Opera length fingerless gloves look fabulous with a simple sheath dress. Handknit, of course.
Stay away from anything with black poppy seeds. They always end up as speckles in your teeth and will ruin your otherwise dazzling smile.
Look thrilled. You should be, for crying out loud. How wonderful it is to be among the cultural cognoscenti in this great city!
Do good, feel good, look good.
Over the next few weeks I am excited about meeting up with some of these intriguing folk for lunch where we can continue our conversations and figure out interesting ways to pool our creative energy. I already know I want to wear something navy blue and will be designing a cool knitting pattern for opera length fingerless gloves.
I have dinner with an amazing group of people once a year who come together at every Grantmakers in the Arts conference. At first blush it looks like a roomful of Asian women and friends, which is how this gathering originated, but after a few rounds of drinks and appetizers we become a roomful of Asian women and friends having a fabulous time and our true identity is revealed -
We are the Joy Bucks Club!
We are all involved in the nonprofit arts universe, we represent foundations, funders, artists, policy makers and government agencies and we can often figure out and talk through things together as girlfriends, and gourmands.
Early this morning I got an email invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation inviting me to attend a lunch for the NYC Cultural Innovation Fund Grantees.
“We are hosting this lunch in order to allow our NYC Cultural Innovation Fund grantees to meet one another, share their experiences with their projects and to advise the foundation on our efforts to catalyze innovation in New York’s creative community.”
The Foundation believes in supporting the creative sector in projects that “fire our imaginations, enrich our neighborhoods, and inspire us to envision and build a better tomorrow.”
What an amazing lunch this will be! And – clutch the pearls! – what a brain trust!
Imagine a roomful of gatejumping restless creative people connected to each other through the Rockefeller Foundation reconnecting to check in with each other and the progress of our projects.
The NYC Cultural Innovation Fund has supported 49 organizations. Innovative projects that include an open-air festival celebrating the year’s innovations in architecture and urban design, incorporating extreme action techniques such as high wire and skydiving to spark new dance forms and the application of new income-generation models to individual artists.
But what fires my imagination is the opportunity to listen.
The Foundation will also be listening for advice from this group on their efforts in catalyzing true innovative creativity. We will all have our ear to the ground for messages from the field. Our field. Our creative community.
In her report, Paul Light of NYU suggest four possible futures for the nonprofit sector:
the rescue fantasy
the withering winterland
an arbitrary withering
transformation
Are you kidding? Those choices are about as appealing as a root canal.
I would like to strongly suggest lunch as a contender for a nonprofit future. We are a resilient, risk taking, fearless and creative field. By gathering us purposefully and in a well catered way, Rockefeller will:
gain invaluable learnings from us that will enable them to be more agile and adaptive in their support of the creative sector
change the mindset from scrambling for limited external resources to harvesting inner abundances
encourage us to build and support the passionate experiences of our work together
I will be bringing a healthy appetite and hungry ears with me to this lunch and I hope to take away a sense of what great stuff is going on among all of us. But what I really want to do is give away as much as I can to be helpful and to be part of the answers.
Halloween. A perfect coming together of the ghosts of what might have been built and the living curious via a cool and elegant iPhone app – the Museum of the Phantom City.
Thanks to Benjamen Walker and Allison Lichter, from WNYC and Cassim Shepard of the Urban Omnibus, I found myself in Bryant Park on the afternoon of Halloween with a group of people clustered around Brett Snyder and Irene Cheng, the designers of this compelling public art project.
Here’s my take away:
Most apps are designed to deliver one way information, diversion, or a service to the person clutching the phone. This app opens the door for some input from the viewer in the form of a survey and perhaps the beginnings of future app platforms that capture what people think about the decisions that led to the creation of their past, present and future environment. Or anything else.
I am a momspy, artspy and nonprofit knitter. Hi! Welcome to hoongyee.com, my blog where you will find style notes for people who change the world. read more>
