Our Story
Our Story
this ?
Do you know
We began 6 years ago in a small room covered in paper. We plastered the walls in former projects & visions for the future. What do we need to thrive? Who is already doing the work? What are the basic needs beyond food clothing & shelter? Where does creativity fit in? Where does it all overlap? Holes in the Wall Collective was born.
WE BEGIN
DRAW ME A SHEEP
In 2014 we jumped right in and found our creative legs in Brooklyn, partnering with Industry City Distillery (before it was Industry City). We produced everything from pop-up benefits to art shows to blowout brass concerts, doing it all from the martini shaking to taking the trash out. We'll never forget those sunsets, sipping on molasses lemonade and hearing those horns shaking the glass in the only 6th floor distillery ever.
In 2016, we started a Creative Residency on the Art in the Fields property in rural PA. There, in our beloved four bedroom Mary Poppins cabin on those 25 acres, we found our ground and our purpose– to hold space for other people's work, and to do it joyously, deliciously, with skillful confrontation and collective feedback. With symphonies of bullfrogs, fireworks of fireflies and our most beloved residents– our chickies, three seasons later, it was clear where we needed to go next.
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A big thank you to Zac, Dave, Ronak, Julio and Scratchy & Jan and Dionisio– we wouldn't be where we are today without you.
And now it's time to build a dedicated space.
We took the leap and got official. We incorporated as a non-profit, built an amazing board and received our 501c(3) tax exempt status at the end of 2019 despite government shut-downs and bureaucratic guffaws out of a Terry Gilliam movie. And then COVID hit, and we hit the streets with our giant spoon. Meeting thousands of people and receiving donations from 1500+ people. Like all of us we're finding our feet again.
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What’s next? Simply put, our own space. A property in the Catskills that will permanently support our programming and mission and will be a physical incubator for the energy and ideas we want to cultivate. Somewhere that is close enough to NYC where we'll remain active and plugged into the din of humanity’s creative engine but somewhere that has its own rhythm ecosystem and resiliency for the future.
Where we get our name
I work, not to make some discourse, but to enlarge the island of freedom which I bear. My job is not to make political declarations but to make HOLES IN THE WALL...that means that my activity must leave behind traces, examples of liberty. It's not the same as leaving complaints about the subject of freedom . . .
you must actually get things done.
-jerzy grotowski
Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish theater director known for his groundbreaking physical performance and training. A creative mystic, Grotowski eventually left the theater in order to continually enlarge "the isle of freedom to which he bore," and the possibility of art itself. He is one of HWC's ancestors. Look him up.
