Changes With Vita

Hello friends and fans of Vita!

I bring some exciting news from the backend of what makes Vita tick.

As many of you know, earlier this year, I chose to take a leave of absence for an undetermined amount of time. This included cancelling the remount of HASML that I was slated to direct in May. Life had taken its toll, and it simply didn’t make sense for me to continue to head a non-profit while I was struggling in so many other facets, including my health.

The time off did what it was supposed to do and things improved quickly. During that time, I realized that some things needed to be a bit different in order for Vita to be sustainable as a project of mine in the future.

At our last board meeting we came up with a few simple adjustments that make it possible for our founding members to harness the power of Vita Arts as a non-profit community organization to fulfill the mission of the company, as well as enable us to remove the financial commitments previously required of our board members.

In addition, we are now poised to offer support to our pool of trusted, board-approved artists who are interested in producing their own events that perpetuate Vita’s mission to transform lives through the power of artistic expression.

Future Vita projects will be fund-raised for on a case my case basis by their leads, with 10% of the funds feeding back into the corporation to cover overhead. For instance, Beau lead a workshop in Eugene last weekend that he was in charge of funding, and I am planning to put on a show which I will fund later in the year. Through these projects, Vita gains the life-blood it formerly got via financial board commitments, which now translate into time rather than a dollar amount.

This is a very exciting time for Vita and those who have supported us through our infancy and beyond. All the money that has been raised thus far, including the money from the HASML remount fundraiser, is in the can to support the corporate structure and keep the company running.

With these changes, Vita remains a cohesive entity. A Vita project is a Vita project, whether it be headed by myself, Beau, Jon, or a guest project that the board has voted to support. I’m very excited to see how this new structure will help us reach more people, offer more forms of art, and reach more audiences.

I’m still working out the nitty gritty details and documents, but if you have any questions feel free to field them to courtnee.papastathis@vita-arts.org. As always, the goal with Vita is transparency. At the same time, I don’t wanna bore you guys with too much info.

Woohoo!