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NEW WOMEN’S FILM FESTIVAL IN NY The inaugural season The festival will screen approximately 20 films and hold conversations with actors, directors, producers, writers and other members of the film community on the Barnard College campus in Morningside Heights, New York. The Athena Film Festival is a production of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College and Women and Hollywood, the excellent blog and website created by Melissa Silverstein. Through feature films, documentaries, and shorts, the Festival will explore what makes a leader. The Festival will highlight the wide diversity of women’s leadership in both real life and the fictional world, illuminating the stories of women from across the globe who have made a difference in their countries and communities. Highlights will include the NY premiere of Miss Representation, Pink Saris, Academy Award® nominated Winter’s Bone, Mo, Desert Flower, The Mighty Macs and several panels. For complete information, please visit the festival’s website: It’s a lot of fun to celebrate Support Women Artists Now Day, and we hope you will join us this year. Since we have many new readers since the last SWAN Day, we wanted to review the basic information about this new holiday. Who Can Create SWAN Day Events? Anyone is welcome to create a SWAN Day event, and the events can be in any art form. The goal is simply to celebrate women’s creativity and to create a sense of solidarity among women artists worldwide. SWAN Day is a grassroots, do-it-yourself holiday, and so there are no requirements of any kind except that your event should celebrate women artists. You can find free SWAN Day logos and free advice about fundraising and publicity for SWAN Day events on our website at www.SwanDay.org. The 500 SWAN Day events over the past three years have included parties, performances, readings, visual art exhibits, film screenings, concerts, workshops, panel discussions, and multi-day festivals. The one thing that they had in common was that they all featured the work of women artists. We encourage you to use your imagination to create an event that is meaningful to you and the people in your community. Your enthusiasm and your commitment to your own creative work and the work of other women artists is more important than any specifics about the form of your event. Our energy is our power. When Is SWAN Day? SWAN Day is officially the last Saturday of March (Women’s History Month), but please feel free to celebrate it any time that is convenient for you during March or early April. Please Post Your Event on the SWAN Day Calendar If you do decide to create a SWAN Day event, we ask you to let us know about it so that we can keep a running tally of the number of SWAN Day events worldwide. If your event is public, you can post it on the free SWAN Day Calendar on our website. You can also contact us directly through the Contact Us link on our website. Contact Us>>. Do I Have to Fundraise? There is no requirement to do fundraising as part of your SWAN Day event, but we think the world needs a holiday where people make gifts to their favorite women artists every year. We want SWAN Day to be as popular as Mother’s Day – and we want women artists to get annual gifts of cash, as well as chocolate and flowers. You are much more likely to get cash gifts if you ask for them. That is why we encourage you to include some kind of fundraising in your SWAN Day event – whether you do online fundraising, sell raffle tickets, host a gala benefit, or meet with people one-on-one, SWAN Day is a good time to explain to people that you are part of an historic world-wide movement of women artists. Tell them what you need to create the best possible work and ask them to help you. Some artists use SWAN Day to raise money for their own work, and some use the holiday to raise money for other women artists. There have been several SWAN Day events that raised money for women artists who had medical expenses or for women who needed scholarships to study the arts. If you don’t want to organize a SWAN Day event, you could still use Facebook, IndieGoGo or other online fundraising sites to raise some money in honor of SWAN Day for your work or the work of other women artists. Will WomenArts Charge Me Anything? No SWAN Day is free. WomenArts does not charge for any of its online services. Please note that if you do online fundraising, most of the services will take a percentage of the funds you raise. Please be sure to read the guidelines of each service carefully. Where Can I Get More Information? There is more information about SWAN Day at www.SwanDay.org. Also, if you have questions, please feel free to contact us. Contact Us>> Fractured Atlas Provides Non-Profit Sponsorship to Two SWAN Day Events Congratulations to SWAN Day Connecticut and the SWAN Spoken Soul Festival in Miami – both were approved for fiscal sponsorships this month by Fractured Atlas. This means that even though they do not have non-profit status, they will be able to offer tax deductions to the supporters of their SWAN Day events. If you would like to apply for fiscal sponsorship from Fractured Atlas, you can apply online. Their next deadline will be February 28. If they accept your project, you will be able to start using your Fractured Atlas fundraising page during the first week of March. Learn more>> Please note that you will need to pay a membership fee to Fractured Atlas to be eligible for their fiscal sponsorship program ($9.50 per month for individuals or $19.50 per month for organizations). As a Fractured Atlas member, you are also eligible for other great benefits like their low-cost liability insurance, health insurance, help with artist visas, and lots of member discounts. Fractured Atlas will take 6% of any funds that you raise to cover their administrative overhead. Artists outside the U.S. can apply for fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas, but they must have a United States taxpayer identification number issued by the Internal Revenue Service AND a valid U.S. mailing address that is checked frequently. Please Tell Us About Your SWAN Day Fundraising Whether you use Fractured Atlas, IndieGoGo or some other online service to raise funds for your SWAN Day event, please let us know. We are going to set up a page on the WomenArts website that will feature all of the online campaigns for SWAN Day events, and we will be publicizing that page during March and April. Contact WomenArts>> Links to More Information WomenArts Website – WomenArts has pages that provide more information about publicity, fundraising, fiscal sponsorships, and crowdfunding in the Build Your Skills section of our website:
IndieGoGo – The IndieGoGo Frequently Asked Questions page is here>> Fractured Atlas – Fractured Atlas has a page of Frequently Asked Questions about their Fiscal Sponsorship program here>> Thanks so much for the great work that all of you do. We are looking forward to another terrific SWAN Day this year! Best Wishes, SPECIAL THANKS WomenArts is supported by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation, the Peace Development Fund, East Bay Community Foundation, the Leo S. Guthman Fund, and by gifts of time, energy and money from artists and arts supporters around the world. ABOUT WOMENARTS WomenArts is a community of artists and allies dedicated to celebrating and supporting art by and about women. For an overview of our programs and services, please see the About Us section of our web site at www.WomenArts.org/about. |
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