You might have noticed my website is a bit out of date. I dropped it for… oh, something like 7 years. Lots went on. If I were to sum it up I would say, Family.
My intention with this site has always been to discuss things I have been inspired by and thinking about and making. These past years I have made steady efforts on reforming Aardvark Arts to be a healthy foundation for my family life in Poland. It was initially a platform to support and network with other artists. Now I am using my artistic practice and teaching efforts to build a caring community around arts and culture.
The official label for my org in Polish is “fundacja z działalnością gospodarczą” (foundation with economic activity). This means that I can do something (for example: performance, workshop, and summer camp) and charge money for it as long as the revenue goes back into the foundation towards it’s public benifit mission.
Some people have wondered why I chose this type of foundation while other people have asked me why I don’t just set up a business. The answer is that this hybrid model matches my style and way of thinking. When I first arrived in Poland I was thinking deeply about blended revenue streams for theatre companies in Los Angeles, evaluating B-Corps vs. fiscal sponsorships, and marveling at socially oriented companies like Toms and Warby Parker.
Still, much of what I have done with my own org here in Poland has been by passion and instinct. Most people that I talked to didn’t understand the “why” and therefore couldn’t help me much with “how” to set things up and run it. Even I have been somewhat limited by a hustle mindset where each project meant I had to somehow balance salaries (expenses) and revenue. I have mostly (nearly entirely) avoided grants because it all seemed too complicated and at odds with my American style of generating revenue.
But it is time for an upgrade to this thinking and I am ready for more complexity in order to properly frame and support the model that I set up all those years ago.
I have always been an artist and producer. Only now have I been able to name what it is I was doing from the beginning. I am working from a European social enterprise model with a Polish foundation structure. Business principles (projects) fund the mission (art, education, community) without always relying on grants. That is the next level that I am working towards. Grants. They will only be available if I can clearly name and frame the efforts which drive revenue and those which are a public benifit.
Creative Summer is a programe.
The 9th season (in 2026) is a project with economic activity. That project will help fund the public benifit projects Apprentice youth leadership and the community scholarship project. My Media Lab teaching activity is a paid workshop and curriculum that I deliver in schools. That project will help cover the costs of the free First Take Film Festival pilot program.
Economic activity isn’t the opposite of the mission it is the engine. It has been 12 years of survival mode thinking but now I’m stepping into sustainability thinking. This has opened up a refreshing view on what to take on next and how to keep evolving as an artist and as a producer.
Stay tuned for more to come.