Welcome and Introduction

© Mark W. Pettigrew

Welcome to the Artistic Rescue blog.

The premise of the Artistic Rescue Project is that the arts often offer excellent opportunities to raise funds for nonprofit charities, churches and other organizations which are regularly or frequently engaged in charitable acts of mercy.

Many organizations use the arts for such purposes already, but that's usually done on an ad hoc (case by case) basis, and the people who manage those fund raisers are often people whose knowledge of the arts leaves something to be desired.

As a person with a lifelong involvement in various artistic disciplines, and as someone with access to numerous other artists who might be similarly inclined to contribute a percentage of the proceeds of the sales of their creative works to organizations engaged in such acts of mercy if they could receive reciprocal benefits in the form of an expansion of the market for their products, I believe that I am well qualified to launch the Artistic Rescue Project.


Regarding artists who contribute portions of the proceeds from their works and acts of artistic creativity to charities and churches and causes, I believe that they will receive reciprocal benefits, both tangible and intangible, but.this is not to say that such artists are motivated only by self interest. It's simply an acknowledgement of the lamentable fact is that members of the artistic community are often in need of financial assistance themselves. Therefore, such artists are often hindered by their personal economic circumstances from doing the charitable works they genuinely wish they could do. By purposefully creating new opportunities for such artists to raise funds for charities while simultaneously making additional money with which to pay their living expenses and professional expenses, everyone benefits.

In the long term, I plan to create a web site which will include certain features which go beyond what a simple blog can do. However, blogs like this one can make it easier to get up and running quickly, in relation to innovative and timely projects such as the Artistic Rescue project; and even after more powerful web sites have been created, such blogs can continue to play an important role.

I'm therefore creating this blog for the following purposes:

• To offer information regarding the project itself, not only with regard to the overall mission statement for the project, but also with regard to details (for the benefit of potential sponsors who feel a need for such information) about how funds will be raised and distributed.
• To offer personal information in relation to how my work with the Artistic Rescue Project fits into my overall plans and long term goals.
• To publicly distribute information (such as catalogs, order forms, links to related e-commerce sites, etc.) pertaining to the sales of fine art prints, concert tickets and other artistic items, for the purpose of raising funds in order to fulfill diverse needs, many of which exist on account of crises caused by such things as natural disasters (such as tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and the like) as well as hardships caused by the unintentional or deliberate acts of human beings in relation to one another. 
• To periodically address frequently asked questions which are directed my way, in order to maximize the efficiency of communications pertaining to the aforementioned fund raising projects and to the overall goal of making the Artistic Rescue project a substantial and meaningful component of an even larger vision of mine, which I call the Christian Arts Initiative.
• To offer progress reports (possibly including detailed financial reports) in order to assure supporters that their dollars have been and are being well spent, and in order to regularly solicit the prayers of those who might be inclined to pray for the success of the project.
• To distribute press releases which might be of interest to news media outlets and their constitutents.
• To establish mutually beneficial relationships with diverse members of the community, both individual and otherwise.
• To offer web links and other types of information regarding diverse resources which are relevant to the overall mission of the Artistic Rescue Project. This would include links to the organizations to which Artistic Rescue plans to donate the proceeds from art sales and ticket sales, such as World Vision, Convoy of Hope, the American Red Cross and others.

Needless to say, having just recently created this blog on 6/22/11, much development remains to be done. I hope that you will bookmark this blog in order to follow along with my posts and other additions to the site, so that we can partner with one another with the goal of building a better world.