Our collective aims to provide stress relief & recovery to artists and festival builders as well as art grants, attendance sponsorship, shelter, food and drinks to general visitors. 

In 2023 we were able to partially or fully sponsor 12 artists and builders from under-represented backgrounds, to attend a festival of their choosing, which they would have had no other financial or logistical means to attend. 

Our program had interviews to learn about the potential recipients and their backgrounds and understand their motivation for why they create. 

During the events we provided general access to a wellness and recovery zone which included access to a steam sauna, ice bath, massages, cooling station, hair braiding and hair washing as well as meals and drinks.

Our offerings were such a success that a number of individuals made it part of their daily routine to visit us and we received strong positive feedback to return next year. 

As this was our first year with these offerings there was a lot of infrastructure and logistical expenses needed to get operational. 

We're still learning about which items make sense to buy vs rent and how that impacts our budget. If we can get those costs down, we would be able to sponsor more individuals in the future.

Some key learnings our collective had this year was that it was the right move to focus on one event and region before expanding.

What went well:

- High resonance with our mission and offerings. We suspected a need for more mental health and recovery services at art events & festivals and that theory was validated.

- Strong leadership team: We had a number of experienced coordinators who enabled us to build and execute on our vision.

- Quick Build setup: Through diligent planning ahead of time we were able to set up our area for the event quickly.

What could be improved:

- Better inventory management. As things were correctly labeled, it took a long time to find equipment.

- Dedicated logistics coordinator. There were a lot of moving pieces and we needed someone who could keep track of things and help adjust plans from unexpected changes.

Some challenges we faced were around transporting large amounts of food and drinks in individual fridges and coolers that put a big logistical strain on us, and we are considering renting a chilled reefer truck for future events. We also had trouble finding larger transport vehicles and more affordable storage units close to the locations we would like to operate in.

We would also like to increase the number of volunteers operating our booths as we suffered strain from the success of our offerings which caused burnout risk with our volunteers.

Looking forward we would like to look into expanding into pop-up fitness/workout stations for various events in addition to our existing offerings.  With the positive reception of our wellness offerings we hope to bring the same things back with some small adjustments.