The Friendly Ghost Calls You!
-
Season Passes: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/212324
The CotFG Season Pass is the intended vehicle for a general, annual operating fund. Funding a nonprofit, outsider, community arts organization is always thorny question, efficiency a major concern. The most direct, efficient, streamlined way to fund CotFG is through community support. Church of the Friendly Ghost is asking you to complete the circle by unlocking this community support potential, today. The general fund established through Season Pass sales provides essential material support for the twelve Featured Series concerts in 2012, but it also supports the growth of all of our operations. We think the arts community in Austin wants and needs Church of the Friendly Ghost to grow. Picture yourself making this happen! We pledge to continue to provide a high quality, cutting-edge performance schedule of engaging programs and a community stage for years to come. Thank you.
SEASON PASS! $90.00 gets you a twelve-performance subscription to our Featured Series in 2012! It’s a great value, half off the door price if you were to pay admission for each of the twelve Featured Series performances individually! (Just to drop a little hint: one of the confirmed Featured Series shows is going to be worth the entire $90.00.) Yes, it’s a season pass, but it is really a way to give your support a function while giving you back something rewarding and valuable. It’s also a convenient way to transform your support into a swell gift! Chances are, you know someone who would be delighted to receive a CotFG Season Pass tucked inside a holiday card! Just sayin’…
Maybe the 2012 season’s performance subscription isn’t for you, but you still wish to donate?
Of course, every dollar will help! If you’d like to give $5.00, outstanding! If you’d like to contribute $200.00 or $1000.00 or even more, you are welcome to contribute in whatever way you are inclined to! Yes, it is tax deductible. Keep in mind that many employers have matching donation programs. Ask if yours does! Cash is definitely required for operations; there’s no way around that, however, if you want to lend your knowledge and skills as well, we have jobs for you to do! Please direct any questions to mailto:cotfg.assistant@gmail.com.
With 100% volunteer power, CotFG presents dozens of memorable, unconventional performances and events annually. The CotFG space, community, and stage foster developing young composers and musicians close to home. CotFG also presents a surprising string of beautiful performances from national and international talents, delivering with cheeky aplomb for eight years running. Take a quick look at the world of arts nonprofits in the last twenty years. Very many come and go in less time than CotFG has been around. We have no intention of slowing pace. The plan is to keep it up, and improve. That’s where you come in!
Intentionally functioning outside of industry and academia, CotFG is a sincere, passion-driven organization. We’ve built up in grassroots fashion since 2003, and we’re not about to go straight now. It’s time to level up, and provide this community with some real muscle! Take a look at the state of cultural arts in Austin right now. Let’s show this city what a happy arts community looks like!
Dropping twenties, tens, and fives on a weekend night out is easily done, let’s be honest. Consider that pleasant Sunday shopping trip the record store; a stop for tacos, and maybe on to the bookstore. Throw in a margarita and complete a pleasantly familiar afternoon, ninety dollars well spent! Now consider what ninety dollars spent on a CotFG season pass can really do. That money is extending far beyond an evening on the town, a coffee table conversation, or a living room hi-fi. Those dollars are an investment in a community eight years in the making, with a vision that extends into decades. We are asking you to redirect less than one hundred dollars of planned expenditure to, arguably, the most radical community music laboratory and performance series East of I-35. Try it, and watch dividends return with far greater value than the cash invested.
At present, the community of very interested audience members, participating artists, volunteers, and patrons is fairly tight. There are only about 250 of us involved with CotFG in one way or another, from occasional attendees, to core volunteers, to hard-sweating knob twisters. It’s a bit like an eccentric small-town high school. By and large, we all know each other. If each one of we 250 contribute as little as $80, once per year, the price of a bag of dog food and a tank of gas, we unlock the $20,000 required to run CotFG’s operations for a year! That kind of support would give us the freedom to provide a sensational concert and event series along with a community laboratory for music and intermedia arts absolutely free to the public. Free public programming is one of CotFG’s big dreams. With real community support, it is within reach. You may consider this project in much the same way one considers community radio; a community driven organization that in turn, serves community. Without real community support at this stage of development, CotFG will not fulfill goals set to serve the community it is designed for in years to come. Indeed, without real community support, there’s no need for CotFG to exist at all. Sure, CotFG is able to exist without community support, but why should it?
CotFG’s work has agency in our community. We all contribute to that agency, by bringing to it our experiences as artists and audience, and creating rich intersections between artist and audience. The very existence of CotFG in many ways influences work that is done in the larger cultural space citywide. No one imagines that CotFG exists independently from the world that surrounds it, and the people that move through it. Without community involvement, it is easy to see how meaning is lost, and the reasons to exist wink out in rapid succession.
This is the question: Should CotFG to continue, grow, flourish, and move into the future as an inspiring, valuable community organization and a real part of Austin’s culture, one where you are the catalyst and the beneficiary? A robust community response to this question is the clear answer. On the other side is non-response, which has an equally clear meaning: CotFG simply does not matter. Make no mistake; CotFG is absolutely able to continue on as it has for the past few years, with very little growth, change, or widespread community support. There are no barriers to prevent activity of that kind. Honestly though, what would be the point? Dear people, as you are well aware, life is far too fleeting to waste time continuing something that has already been repeated to a known outcome unless it’s sex or eating, and even then we’ve got to go on adventures. The core volunteers who run CotFG don’t ever get paid a dime to do it, and never have. What do you reckon keeps them motivated? The answer is passion, vision, and values for cultural community. CotFG has a vision for the future of cultural arts in Austin. Do you share it? If the vision simply isn’t shared beyond the two or three energetic and skilled people that really make it happen at CotFG, then frankly there are a few other things they should be doing. So, we’re asking you to let it be known, right now. Shall CotFG continue with community support, or should it quietly end?
CotFG has two strategies: One that extends to the ten year anniversary as an organization with roughly triple the resources available now, then, one that lays a plan for progression to the twenty year mark. Not only is this within reach, but a worthwhile effort that will bestow a meaningful and lasting gift on Austin’s cultural community. Passion and values will make it a reality. This is important work, more than quaint, kind, or sweet. There is disrespect for this work from the institution and industry adjacent to it and, in some ways, reliant on it. A response is required. Are you participating?
It is only in certain cities, at certain times in history that a truly fascinating nexus of culture can come about. In the last two decades, Austin has shown a clear willingness to be whatever its investors wish to transform it into. Consider the trends.
In closing, regardless of where your decision to support Church of the Friendly Ghost lies, forgetting CotFG entirely for the moment, please regard this as a general, open invitation for you to be a part something that is real, something that is beautiful and true. Take action, show up, be irreverent, and seize culture in Austin as your own. The odious force of bland consumerism is standing by, sucking its teeth.
With thanks,
Aaron Mace
George Pasterk
Henna ChouPlease direct any questions to mailto:cotfg.assistant@gmail.com
