Our Values & Vision

Our Values

WE BELIEVE THAT…

• gathering and gathering well are fundamental to making the world more equitable, less lonely, more joyful, less fractured, and more just.

• everyone has the right to gather and to gather in an extraordinary way.

• although we focus on extraordinary gatherings, not every gathering needs to be extraordinary – nor should it be.

• gathering creates a unique collective energy that can be harnessed and redirected.

• gathering can lift guttural emotion to the surface of the body, mind, and spirit.

• gathering is a powerful tool for linking disciplines and, in so doing, can yield otherwise inaccessible moments of discovery and innovation.

• there are good gatherings and bad gatherings, and that gathering done poorly can be harmful.

• discourse and disagreement are valuable but that they never justify dehumanizing language or action.

• discomfort can be productive but that it must be handled with empathy and deployed with care.

• the host of the gathering explicitly and implicitly circumscribes the potential of a gathering. As individuals and as a company, we are limited in the types of gatherings we’ll be able to create effectively and lead authentically.

• other people can and will create better gatherings than we will, especially for groups to which we do not belong or are not otherwise in community with.

• the leaders of an organization explicitly and implicitly circumscribe the identity and perspective of that organization. We believe that we must work to identify and address the ways in which our specific unearned privileges limit our perspective and our practice.

• organizations must actively ground their programming and operations in anti-racist and anti-capitalist practice. We believe that these intersecting practices require flexibility, intention, openness to critique, regular self-reflection, and readiness to repair harms done.

• accountability is an active and sustained practice of reducing the harms we cause and investing in our potential to grow. We are accountable to ourselves, to our values, to our community, and to our community’s values.

• accountability relies on transparency of practice, clarity in communication, collaborative decision-making, and investment in systems change within and outside of our organization.

• we should always be actively learning.

  
  

Our Vision

WE ENVISION A WORLD IN WHICH…

• every gathering is constructed thoughtfully, designed with purpose, and carried out with intention.

• people are routinely surprised and delighted.

• people routinely have their beliefs and assumptions challenged.

• people embrace productive discomfort.

• gatherings intentionally straddle lines of difference to promote healing, conversation, and collaboration between different communities.

• gatherings are intentionally homogeneous to promote healing, self-reflection, and self-discovery within specific communities.

• art-makers and cultural producers regularly interrogate and reimagine what they mean when they speak about “community."

• accessibility in gathering is prioritized through the creation of both equitably and differently accessible gatherings.

• every individual has equitable access to opportunity, resources, and advancement regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, or any other axis of historical or contemporary oppression.

• the success of an individual or organizational pursuit is not primarily defined in terms of money, power, or influence, but rather is defined in terms of its contribution to the greater social good.

• performance-makers of all kinds are well-equipped to incorporate the tenets of purposeful gathering into their creative processes and products.

• everyone has the tools, resources, and inspiration necessary to create their own extraordinary gatherings.

To explore the authors, artists, and creators who inform our practice: