4 minute read
GOAL 2
GOAL 2 SHARE KNOWLE DGE
bring people together to learn from each other and share KNOWLEDGE Art Agriculture Scholarship
Bring people together to learn from each other. Foster the creative process and build community through place-based, experiential, cross-pollinating programming.
STRATEGY A // Host an Internationally Recognized Residency Program
Craigardan’s artist-in-residence and internship programs bring diverse perspectives together, enabling participants to build skills, develop ideas, and help inform and grow a sense of place and purpose within a safe, supportive environment. Since our opening in 2017, we have continued to expand the concept of an arts residency to include at any given time craftspeople, visual artists, writers, performing artists, farmers, chefs, scholars, thinkers, and other disciplines. We have supported over 100 residents working in more than 25 different disciplines, at all stages of creative development, from all over the world. We offer scholarships, fellowships, internships, and work exchange opportunities to provide financial support that meets everyone’s needs.
Identify and remove barriers and increase safety and support for creative individuals from different cultural backgrounds. Attract, select, and support residents who more accurately reflect the diversity of our global population. Proactively seek to support the creative work of people who are disabled and people who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQIA+, and Women.
Attract, select, and support international, national, and local participants in order to ensure a broad range of perspectives, skills, backgrounds, and techniques within and across media. Proactively seek to support the creative work of people who are underserved and under-resourced.
OBJECTIVE 3 // Increase Point-of-Career Diversity
Attract, select, and support emerging, mid-career, and established artists-in-residence in order to bring a range of innovation, ideas, and experience together at all times. Strengthen connections between individuals of all ages through a welcoming environment of mutual respect and learning.
STRATEGY B // Design Innovative Public Programs and Convene Conversations
Within our first three years, Craigardan offered more than 180 public programs with over 2700 participants. We developed programs that actively fostered cross-disciplinary creative exchange between visiting artists and scholars and the local community. And, we inspired other organizations to look beyond the traditional and the expected in their own programs. In these next five years we intend to push past our early achievements and challenge ourselves to go even further in three key areas. We wish to foster relationships and the sharing of knowledge with our Indigenous neighbors. We aim to create educational experiences that encourage dialogue across the boundaries of media and thinking. And, we will design intentional, place-based programs for all ages that are inclusive, responsive, and generative. These three goals will be at the forefront of each objective.
Design courses that respond to community and cultural needs and also span concepts and cross disciplines. Create space for learning that surprises and delights, challenges norms, and inspires new ways of thinking.
Design annual, monthly, weekly, and singular events, such as our summer speaker series, annual food justice summit, and Monday Night Dinners, that highlight a broad range of voices and expertise while responding to current cultural and social topics.
OBJECTIVE 3 // Offer Land-Based Learning
Design campus-wide experiential learning opportunities that develop a deepened sense of place, such as guided walks, kids camp, art outdoors, land-responsive performance, and other courses taught from our remote cabins, fields, and trails.
STRATEGY C // Anchor the Farm as a Tool
Craigardan was one of the very first artist residency programs in the world to include agriculture and culinary arts and to be set within an educational working farm. In addition to providing food to program participants and the public, the fully diversified farm and working forest activates place beyond beauty and sets the stage for creative thinking. The setting reflects our region’s current and historic ties to agriculture, environmental conservation, and arts and culture. Serving as a nexus between art and life, work and play, wild and cultivated, the farm is a medium through which we learn interwoven social, ecological, and financial frameworks for understanding process and making decisions. To maximize the potential of the farm, we will actively steward and design our working landscape to serve as a direct and indirect mode of education and inspiration.
OBJECTIVE 1 // Directly Educate
Use our classes, workshops, and events to bring multiple communities of people together around the joy and satisfaction of cultivating our most basic human need -- food.
OBJECTIVE 2 // Indirectly Teach
Convey ideas through farming and eating, and inspire dialogue on diverse and complex topics such as food justice, environmental conservation, agroecological principles, cultural appropriation, structural racism, and food sovereignty.
OBJECTIVE 3 // Inspire Self-Perpetuation
Design the farm as a hands-on, place-based experience that inspires the sharing of values and knowledge and can be scaled, replicated, or modeled through a ripple effect of growth, movement, and change.
