Summary: An annual live painting & art-making event on a half-mile wall in Cabbagetown, with a positive message.
Scope – Aspirations
Project Scope of Services
1. To paint new murals onto and over an existing large collaborative piece, as part of on-going evolution and update.
2. To offer supplies, services, and support to a diverse and inclusive community of painters and visual artists.
3. To provide Atlanta with a culturally significant and thoughtfully-messaged place for reflecting on identity, thinking justice, and contemplating beauty.
Aspirations & Goal Planning:
Forward Warrior is continually developing short-term and long-term goals for our artists, audience, and organization.
Our launchpad:
Put paint on a big wall,
amplify artist voices,
& bring people together
to make them stronger.
In the short-term, the organization aims to write successful grants and attract thoughtful partners to achieve financial goals for the annual painting. Thinking for the future, Forward Warrior plans to develop lasting relationships and secure reliable funding in order to build a solid foundation for longevity. Internally, we hope to craft legacy resources to assist ongoing management or facilitate eventual succession, strategize best practices, and refine guidance documents. We also have plans to increase our digital footprint, improve social media tactics, and produce supplementary video content.
This coming year, Cabbagetown Initiative is focusing on expanding street level accessibility and intensifying landscape stewardship. The neighborhood organization is drawing on its membership to take a more active role in fundraising, planning, sponsor relations, and volunteerism to ensure the continued success of Forward Warrior, and simultaneously engaging the property owner with positive reinforcement while preparing for future transfer and development, along with the need to protect the site through rezoning, legislation, and historic district regulations.
Our audience is growing but there are many improvements to be made. Current conditions encourage us to consider digital solutions, concentrate on archival measures, and look for innovations that can virtually deliver the wonderment of the wall to disconnected communities. We would like to capture dollars from established neighbors and affluent visitors, with content that rewards generous patrons for supporting outreach. This shares the art of Forward Warrior with a wider audience who may not possess the economic or physical mobility to experience a large public mural wall on a daily basis.
Forward Warrior artists enjoy a large, front-facing, public exhibition of their work that exists for discovery 24-7-365, offering unique visibility; a magnetic, concentrated area for audiences; ongoing, incredibly rewarding exposure; arguably unassailable credibility; and other fancy words that don’t pay the bills. Though many artists are blessed with new economic opportunities due to their participation in Forward Warrior, we recognize this is not enough. Providing supplies, permits, space, and web space provides value, but we aspire to offer compensation and reimbursement for things like transportation costs. Indeed, doing so will increase the opportunities available for new artists from less privileged backgrounds, and burgeon our fellowship.
Short-term, we hope your financial assistance will help us add Emerging Artist Stipends to our budget, which can be used for additional, personal supplies and equipment, as well as private costs associated with preparing for a large-scale installation.
As we look ahead, Forward Warrior is committed to accelerating the referral process for private commissions, advocating better for our artists in commercial client relations (including contract assistance), and modernizing artist mechanisms for instantly monetizing their fan-base during the event.